There has been an obsession with the ball going soft this series, but India gave England a lesson on Sunday in the value of fielding a balanced attack.
The leather ball has gone soft throughout the history of the game, and out of shape, it’s just doing it quicker because Dukes have a serious problem with their production right now.
When it does, the onus is on teams to find different roles for bowlers and adopt different styles of bowling – Pakistan defined reverse swing, spin bowlers adapted their games.
I get cross when I see teams acting like there’s only one way of getting a wicket and India looked to alternative skills on the fourth day to great success.
When you saw Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj making the new ball talk off the cracks, and England’s players jumping all over the place, you’d have been a brave man to bet on off-spinner Washington Sundar walking off with four for 22.
But it is a very dry pitch, and when your two premier fast bowlers are tired, others have to step up. If it’s not spinning, can you defeat the batters in the air, with drift? As Sundar did. He beat players on the outside edge, not the inside.
Express pace is great, but England need to work on other ways of getting wickets in games
When it is dry and your fast bowlers are tired, other players in the team need to step up
Washington Sundar walked off with four for 22 – England, like India, need to find other routes
England need to grow their ways of getting wickets, because in Australia, there will be periods when the Kookaburra ball goes soft, and although they want the excess pace of Mark Wood and Jofra Archer for that reason, you need spinners deceiving opponents as Shoaib Bashir did KL Rahul in the first innings here.
Batting was tough on Sunday, reminding me of the old Lord’s pitch featuring a ridge that made the ball fly through.
India have been better than England with the new ball, and this phase of matches have been something of a double-edged sword because their top-order batters have played better throughout than England’s too.
The two England players who are vulnerable are obviously Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope. With the Ashes ahead, the selectors have stuck with them, and it looks like they’re going to continue sticking with them, but this series so far has been a microcosm of why they average 30.89 and 35.22 respectively in Test cricket.
I am not sure why Crawley was batting like he did in the first innings – charging down the pitch, standing outside off, standing way outside his crease, then going back into it.
He doesn’t seem to trust his defensive technique, yet the one time he’s played well in this series – the half century in the second innings at Headingley – he did just that.
It wasn’t doing that much in the first innings here, that he had to be any different. You can’t be whooshing outside off-stump as an opening batter against quality fast bowlers.
This is a classic pitch for gully catches and yesterday’s dismissal made it four times this series that he’s been caught in that area. On Sunday, there were two fielders posted at gully, making it an even more dangerous shot. The percentages were not in the batsman’s favour.
Shoaib Bashir did KL Rahul in the first innings and that was a good sign of what England need
Zak Crawley is vulnerable in the England side but but the selectors have stuck with him
Ollie Pope is too – but it looks as though the duo will stick around with the Ashes coming up
It’s coming to the stage where he’s got to ask him himself: Am I OK batting like this?
Three years ago, Brendon McCullum said that Crawley’s game is suited to inconsistency. I’m afraid at the moment it’s very consistent. There are lots of loose dismissals.
He may well go to Old Trafford and bash a hundred on a good, fast, bouncy pitch as he did in the 2023 Ashes. That’s why they want him to go to Australia next winter – he plays the ball above his waist well. But does he want to end his career with statistics like he has now?
Similarly, Pope needs to find a way to keep scoring through a series. Remember, in India last year, he followed that 196 in the first Test with 118 runs across the next four matches. This time, he hit 106 in Leeds, but has 80 in five innings since.
Test cricket is about adapting and answering the questions it repeatedly throws up.