Nagpur, day three: India 297-8

It’s not fair to say that one could have skipped the first five hours of today’s play and not missed anything, but it isn’t completely inaccurate either. MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli batted very well; they had clearly paid attention to how the pitch had played on the first two days and they both curbed their attacking instincts in favour of slow, gradual build up. It was exactly how they had to play and although England bowled well in the first session all they managed to do was keep India down to 59 runs in 32 overs. England caused brief problems at various points, but could not find the breakthrough until very late and largely because of the patience and discipline shown by India. It was impressive batting in any circumstance, but given how far India have been from showing anything like this kind of fight or application all series it was all the more remarkable.

England by no means bowled poorly for most of the day. Just as there were brief periods where the caused problems there were also some periods, mostly with the new ball, where they had trouble keeping India tied down. But by and large they did what they could; after it looked like the pitch was starting to do a bit last night there was no sign of any sort of life today. It was simply a slightly more emphatic version of what it was on the first day: slow and with nothing in it for either bowlers or batsmen. A reasonably interesting match has developed so far, but that is fortunate and this wicket is not good enough for Test cricket. A Test wicket must have something in it. England actually deserve a lot of credit for continuing to fight so hard even into the last hour. After bowling for five hours with no help and looking rather sore Jimmy Anderson bowled some unbelievable deliveries late in the day, one of which got him his fourth wicket of the innings. It was a fantastic effort.

I seem to be in the minority in thinking that Tim Bresnan also bowled well today. He was as tight as any of the other bowlers and looked threatening more than any of the other bowlers bar Anderson in the first two sessions. He got the ball to swing and troubled the batsmen particularly in a spell before tea in which he came close to an lbw twice and then just barely missed a caught and bowled. I don’t think he is the best choice in a three-seamer attack; as I said after the first Test against the West Indies I think he needed to spend more time with Yorkshire this summer and he has never looked as good as he did before his injury. But it was not ridiculous to have selected him for this Test and there is nothing to suggest that Graham Onions or Stuart Meaker would have done a better job on this pitch. Bresnan was not even England’s worst bowler today, that was Monty Panesar. Which is not to say that Panesar bowled poorly, he didn’t, but he was the only one to never look threatening. With all the tweets going around about Bresnan going 74.4 overs without a wicket it was mysteriously never mentioned that Panesar had just one wicket, a tail-ender, in his last 70.3 overs.

England would have hoped for most of the day that just getting one wicket would instigate a collapse. And this is exactly what happened, though the plan probably did not involve waiting until the last hour of play. It was far from an ideal circumstance for Ravindra Jadeja to make his debut and he never looked comfortable in his innings of twelve. But the more unexpected casualty was Dhoni. He was in the nineties when Kohli was out and the increased pressure and subsequent loss of Jadeja kept him from really scoring. He stayed in the nineties for over an hour and the pressure finally told when he tried for a single that wasn’t quite on and was run out. Even as an England supporter who has been quite harsh about the way Dhoni has led his side in the past I feel for him. He surrendered in the last Test but here he promoted himself and played a real captain’s innings to keep his side alive in the Test. He lost patience just a little bit too soon, however.

Overall this was still India’s day, but the four wickets before stumps mean that England are back on top in the match. But what India have at least done is kept the Test close. India still trail by 37 and although one could see them get a lead close to fifty if Ashwin bats well it is more likely that they will end up within about twenty runs of parity in one direction or the other. They should try to get as many as possible; I don’t think making England bat as soon as possible is really to their advantage as has been suggested. They are going to have to get the runs at some point and they might as well do it now before the pitch has a chance to break up (though it may not), whilst England’s bowlers are a bit tired and at a time when they can use those runs to apply pressure to England’s batsmen. Either way England are probably going to have to bat for about four sessions to secure the Test, but it will be easier to start that early tomorrow and doing so will give them a chance to still win the Test instead of just batting to save it.

Nagpur, day two: India 87-4

After India probably shaded the first day of the Nagpur Test England emphatically won the second. England actually found batting a bit easier in the morning. Perhaps India had been a bit demoralised by Matt Prior and Joe Root playing comfortably the night before and perhaps the pitch was just a tad easier. Prior was ultimately out missing a ball that just went on, but Joe Root continued to bat very well until finally getting a bit too impatient and getting out. It was very similar to the dismissal of Pietersen, actually, and by coincidence occurred on exactly the same score. But it was a very good innings by Root and especially given in how much trouble England were. Perhaps most important was how composed he looked for most of it. It leaves a bit of a selection dilemma for the tour of New Zealand. It would be very harsh to drop Root after this, but Jonny Bairstow had an excellent Test at Lord’s at the end of last summer and the pitches in New Zealand will be closer to that. This is also just the one innings from Root. And then there is James Taylor, who should have been in the squad instead of Eoin Morgan. It is a very tricky problem, but fortunately for England one which can be left for another day.

After Prior was out Graeme Swann came up with a nice reminder of how good a batsman he really can be. A lot of the time when he bats we see him come in at ten with only one of the other bowlers for company and he ends up trying to get quick runs before England are bowled out. This time though he had Root at the other end who was settled and Swann played much more sensibly with him. He still played some shots, but he has the talent to do so within reason and today he had the time to get to 56 before he started getting over aggressive and was lbw reverse sweeping. It isn’t the shot one really minds from a tail-ender, and especially not one batting with Jimmy Anderson, but it is not a shot with a good reward to risk ratio and there was really no need to play it at that point. It was a very good innings overall though and Swann’s first fifty since 2009. Hopefully this innings is enough to ensure that he bats a bit higher up the order next time and has a chance to form a proper partnership.

England’s score of 330 looked like a decent one. India have to win this game and batting last I would estimate they need no fewer than four hundred in the first innings. That did not look like it would be easy to get at the start of the innings and now at stumps it looks very unlikely. I suggested yesterday that the success of Ishant Sharma would bode well for Jimmy Anderson and that is exactly what happened. Anderson was not only the best bowler, he was almost unplayable. He took three wickets and the dismissals of Sachin Tendulkar and Gautam Gambhir were both set up beautifully. He did not have time to set up Virender Sehwag though: the ball that knocked over Sehwag’s middle stump was only the third of the innings. He beat the bat of Virat Kohli a few times as well and looked an almost constant threat during his spell after tea.

Part of the reason Anderson was so threatening though was the bowling of the rest of the attack. England started off attacking, but eventually settled down into the same plan that India had used. Not only did it have the same effect of building the pressure, but England’s spinners also started to find real turn. With Tim Bresnan getting the ball to move about and Swann and Monty Panesar getting the ball to turn and even bounce a bit there was no way for India to really release the pressure without playing some shots. Anderson was bowling better than the other three, but I don’t think he would have had the same success without the pressure being built at the other end as well.

There was also some very good captaincy by Alastair Cook. Tendulkar had looked uncertain against Panesar, but Cook brought Anderson on to bowl instead and it paid off with the fifth ball. It was the ninth time Anderson had dismissed Tendulkar, giving him sole possession of the record for most dismissals of Tendulkar. It will also bring the questions of how long Tendulkar will stay in Test cricket back to the fore. The ball that got him was a good one that nipped back in, but Tendulkar’s footwork was absent and he seemed surprised that the ball kept low despite almost every ball in the match doing the same. It was a great ball, but he played it very poorly and there was a strong sensation as he walked off that it was his penultimate innings. Certainly it ought to be. He is doing neither the team nor himself any favours by hanging on.

England are in control of the Test. The two batsmen at the crease now for India are out of form and looked very uncertain playing out the rest of the day. The next man in is on debut, though he has had a good domestic season, and after that is only Ravichandran Ashwin and the tail. Ashwin has batted well in the series, but it is not a good idea to put one’s hopes on a number eight, even a good one. Even if he does score some runs again it won’t matter if the other batsmen don’t get some first. India can’t afford to only get up to parity; they have to get a first innings lead which means they will have to bat all day tomorrow and then some. It’s not a task they can leave for the number eight, though may be too much even for the recognised batsmen. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility of course, but it’s less likely than the alternative and at the other end of the spectrum England have a chance to effectively put the match to rest with one very good hour in the first half of the day.

Nagpur, day one: England 199-5

India are probably on top after a very interesting first day of cricket. Certainly they have played much better today than we saw for most of the last two Tests; they had a clear plan when bowling and some much sharper fielding kept England tied down. But they do appear to have missed a trick with the selection; their most dangerous bowler all day was Ishant Sharma who bowled quite well at the start of the day in particular. But he is their only seamer and they have four spinners. It is hard to say that it has failed given the position in which England find themselves, but one gets the impression that India might be in an even better position if they had backed their seamers more. They did not even give Sharma the second new ball right away.

England’s score looks worse than it actually is, however. The pitch is very slow and it is very hard to score runs. India had a very defensive field all day and they did an excellent job of keeping England tied down and with the variable bounce on offer it was very dangerous to try to break the shackles. It also meant that it was hard for new batsmen to come in and we saw a couple of collapses because of this. It is actually a very poor Test pitch; there is nothing wrong with turners and there is nothing wrong with giving something to the bowlers in any country, even quite a lot to the bowlers, but this had nothing for the bowlers and nothing for the batsmen. It was just slow and low and will probably get even worse as the match progresses.

But although England’s position looks worse than it is, it is still not a good one. Of the five wickets to go down at least four of them were avoidable. The one that was not was Alastair Cook; he got an absolutely shocking lbw decision on a ball that struck him outside the line of off stump and was actually going even further away from the stumps. It was possibly (possibly not definitely) the worst decision I’ve seen so far in this series and that is saying quite a bit. It is yet another example that DRS, even with its flaws both real and imagined, is preferable to having an umpire standing alone. There was a suggestion that Jonathan Trott should have been out a couple of overs before to the same umpire, but the ball actually struck him just fractionally outside the line of off stump and was correctly given not out. The umpire appears to have ‘made up’ for a decision that he got correct in the first place and it could really hurt England on a pitch that would have suited Cook’s patience.

Of the other dismissals, Nick Compton’s early dismissal is borderline. He played at a ball he could have left, but it was in the corridor of uncertainty and bounced a lot more than the previous delivery. It was good bowling as much as it was bad batting. Jonathan Trott grafted hard for 44 before losing his concentration and his off stump. It was a poor bit of batting, but that is the sort of dismissal that becomes more likely on this pitch. Scoring is so slow that any lapse in concentration is magnified. Kevin Pietersen was out in a similar manner; he grafted past tea before losing his patience and slapping a catch to mid-wicket. It was an innings of the sort of ‘new KP’ we saw in Mumbai and to an extent in Calcutta, the KP that can actually construct an innings by playing sensibly for a time and then upping the rate, finished by a return of the classic impatient Pietersen. It is at least a start though and if Pietersen can continue to bat properly after he leaves India his average will end up closer to where it probably ought to be instead of below fifty as it has been.

Ian Bell’s dismissal was the worst. It wasn’t stupid, but it was careless. He pushed tamely at an utterly innocuous delivery outside off and just pushed it straight into the hands of short extra cover. It was the first ball he had faced from Piyush Chawla, but it wasn’t anything to do with the spin. He didn’t misread the delivery in any way; he actually middled it. It was just lazy and it could have happened to any bowler. It’s that which has really been the problem for Bell recently. He has not played poorly by any stretch; he made runs pretty consistently over the summer and even in this series has not looked in poor form at all. He has got in more often than not this year and whilst he has been unlucky at times not to get a hundred (he was stranded by rain and by England winning) he has also got careless and has got himself out between fifty and a hundred no fewer than four times. He needs to find a way to stop doing this because although he should not be dropped in the near future there is an increasing amount of competition for middle order spots.

It is hard to judge what a good first innings score is on this pitch. As much as England wobbled in the afternoon, they have had two good partnerships: Pietersen and Trott and then Matt Prior and Joe Root have both been much more settled and have accepted that they cannot score quickly. It shows how comfortable the latter pair were that by the end of the day India were trying not to bowl any more overs despite needing to win the Test! In a way it is similar to what we saw at Mumbai when India scraped past three hundred and it looked like a very good score before England easily went past it; we won’t really be able to judge this pitch until India have had a bat. There are no demons in the pitch, but nor are there runs and England do still have some advantages in reserve. Sharma got reverse swing very early today and Anderson will be a threat if he can do the same. The pitch will also probably deteriorate a lot at the match progresses and it may be very hard to bat last. It may become a battle of patience and if that happens I think one will have to back England. But that is a long way off as is England’s desired score of over three hundred. They need Prior and Root to get themselves in tomorrow morning and ideally get enough to render the discussion of three hundred irrelevant.

Nagpur Test preview

Of the two teams who will contend the Nagpur Test at this time tomorrow, one will be a lot happier than the other. England go into the Test on the back of two comfortable wins which retained the Pataudi Trophy. They need only a draw to secure the series, but a result seems a lot more likely. There is a lot less information on the pitch than there was before the Calcutta Test, but given how much of the information on the Calcutta Test was inaccurate that may be a good thing. Most likely it will be a result wicket with India needing to win to level the series, but it might be closer to the sort of result wicket we saw in Calcutta than Mumbai.

The type of wicket has not mattered much in the first three Tests, however. In all three cases one team has comprehensively outplayed the other. After the batting collapse to which we had become accustomed in Ahmedabad, England have looked much the better side and it has forced India into a pair of changes for the last Test. Yuvraj Singh and Zaheer Khan have both been dropped and been replaced by Ravindra Jadeja and Parvinder Awana respectively. It is hard to blame India for deciding to ring the changes after two below par performances on the trot, but their problems go a lot deeper than those two players. Jadeja looks like a step up from Singh, if nothing else his recent triple centuries show that he does have the wherewithal to occupy the crease, something that has been conspicuous by its absence from a lot of the Indian middle order. Awana has also had a good domestic season, but he actually played against England once already. He was part of the India A side who England faced at the start of the tour and took 0-60 off twelve overs, the same figures that got Stuart Broad dropped for the Calcutta Test.

I expect India will have only those two changes to the XI that played in Calcutta, but there have been demands for many more and there is still the chance that Ravichandran Ashwin will miss out now that Piyush Chawla has been added to the squad. Despite being India’s lone resistance with the bat in the last Test, he is primarily a bowler and had a terrible match, and indeed series, with the ball. With India needing to win the Test and therefore needing to take wickets I would suggest that they drop him except for the fact that Chawla does not like being any sort of improvement; he has a first class average this year of almost fifty.

England, by contrast, can justifiably select the same XI as they did in Calcutta. I still want a fifth bowler and once again there were periods of the last Test when four bowlers simply did not look like enough, but that is very unlikely to happen and in any case the XI who played in Calcutta did an excellent job. England will not have been happy to lose three quick wickets in the second innings, but it did at least give Ian Bell some time at the crease and he made the most of it. He looked utterly fluent in steadying the ship and guiding England to victory. Despite some suggestions after the first innings, there should be no suggestion of dropping him.

India could certainly come back to level the series in Nagpur. They have failed to make the most of winning the toss twice in a row, but if they win the toss again and do make the most of it for once then England will be in some trouble. England are probably favourites; those are both big ‘ifs’, of course, and I don’t think England will look even at a changed Indian XI with a lot of fear. We also don’t yet know whether India will even be up for the fight. And if England win the toss and bat sensibly again then India are all but out of the series. But England must maintain their intensity in the way they did at Sydney during the last Ashes. Now is not the time to let things slip.

England win by seven wickets

The victory for England in Calcutta was ultimately not as crushing as perhaps England would have hoped. But it was very comfortable and a well deserved win for the side which played the better cricket almost from the word go. It means that England retain the Pataudi Trophy and can look to secure the series next week in Nagpur.

England simply outplayed India in this Test and for the second time in succession did so after India had been given most of the early advantages. Having twice failed now to win the match after winning an important toss India must be very concerned about what might transpire if they were to actually lose the toss in Nagpur. But the excellence of England over the last four-and-a-bit days should not imply that there is nothing on which England need to work in the next couple of days. It almost seems harsh to say after scoring 523 in the first innings and not missing an innings win by much that the batting should have done better, but it is accurate. Of that 523, 190 came from Alastair Cook and another 87 came from Jonathan Trott. This was not the raging turner of Mumbai where just getting in was an achievement, it barely turned at all before the fourth day and a lot of the other batsmen should have scored more. Five hundred and twenty-three is a good score and 207 was a good lead, but it might have been very different had Cook been caught on 17 instead of dropped. England’s last eight partnerships added only 185 between them. There is also the mini-collapse on the last day to sound a bit of a warning.

Alastair Cook was deservedly Man of the Match, but I think the real standout performers for England were the bowlers and James Anderson in particular. Anderson has worked hard all series and before now had only a couple of wickets and a good economy rate to his credit. But he finally had a bit of help this time and turned that into six wickets in the match and the best analysis on either side. The attack as a whole had only the first hour of the first day and the first session of the fourth day in which they really struggled. For the rest of the match they exerted consistent pressure and India completely caved to it in the afternoon session of the fourth day. Anderson was the standout performer, but all the bowlers were effective and all of them took wickets at various points. There is little more that can be asked of them and I think England will be quite happy with the same or a similar show in Nagpur.

A slight worry for England might be how many of India’s wounds were self-inflicted, however. England bowled well and applied pressure, but once that pressure started to tell India’s batsmen stopped even trying to resist. The only one who bothered to show up in the second innings was Ravichandran Ashwin and he was far too late to do anything but save a bit of face on the penultimate day. If he had not batted so well India would have lost by an innings. But if a couple of members of the top order had applied themselves in the manner that he did India might have won. Far too many of India’s wickets fell because the batsman was either lazy or careless. India should not even take too much out of that batting performance from Ashwin because it was from a man who had already failed badly at his prime task: bowling. Ashwin took 3-183 in the first innings, but all two of them were Anderson and Monty Panesar. The other one was a gift from Kevin Pietersen.

But far worse than anything India did with the bat was their fielding. This was probably the biggest difference between the sides; England started off with a run out of Sehwag after a good stop on the boundary by their most unathletic fielder. Most of India’s fielders were happy to wave the ball through to the rope and the rest were not sure how to use their hands. They had one really sharp work from Virat Kohli to run out Cook, but even in that case he was very fortunate that Cook did not get his bat down and it still came after the England captain had twice been dropped. England ran threes with impunity all match and Cook and Compton in particular stole quick singles to most of the fielders. Even well before the end, Zaheer Khan had stopped even bothering to move before the ball was bowled and Ishant Sharma had no interest whatsoever in cutting off balls in the outfield. England were far from perfect, but not only were they much better they never simply gave up like India did.

India’s mentality as a side in this Test was poor. We have seen it before, but once again they seemed to have no fight when it mattered. By the time they decided to try to do something it was far, far too late. That said, however, I think the talk of radical changes is a bit premature. There is no way this will be a good series for India and they will need to have a look at themselves when it is over. But it isn’t over yet and there are a hundred little things that could go against England in the next Test to allow India to level the series. It looks unlikely, but it looked unlikely that England would make such a turnaround after Ahmedabad and it cannot be assumed that India will continue to play so poorly. That the series is still in the balance should be a source of some irritation to England; if they had batted even vaguely competently in Ahmedabad they would be 2-0 up now and could relax. As it is they have to maintain their intensity and continue to play well on what will likely be a result pitch at Nagpur. They can win and I think they should, but it is too early to start looking at where India went wrong.

Calcutta, day four: India 239-9

Today was a day of brilliance and frustration in almost equal measure for England. The morning was the worst session England had since the first day at Ahmedabad and if one had told England at lunch that they would be have India nine down at stumps they would be delighted. But the first eight of those wickets fell in an extraordinary three hours after lunch.

The afternoon session was the one that took India utterly out of the match as they lost quick wickets and then appeared to capitulate. It was such a dramatic collapse that several interesting points got a bit lost at the time, but the one that very much did not was an incident in the innings of Gautam Gambhir. He prodded forward to Graeme Swann and appeared to have edged the ball to slip where Trott took an athletic catch low down. But the umpire waited and then went upstairs to check if it had carried. It clearly had and as that is the only thing for which the umpire can go upstairs it looked like it was going to be out. But the replay showed that Gambhir had not actually hit the ball and under the regulations the third umpire is allowed to give not out because of that. This is clearly a good thing; it would have been an utter farce if the replays had clearly shown that the batsman was not out, but he was given out because the umpire was not allowed to say so. But it is hardly less of a farce as it is because effectively Gambhir was saved by a having DRS for that one ball. There have been several howlers in the series with regard to the batsmen either hitting what the umpire thought they hadn’t or not hitting what the umpire thought they had. Why on earth then were they not allowed to go to the third umpire? If the BCCI accept that this back door use of technology is reliably why can they not use the same technology without having to pretend to check a catch?

The reprieve for Gambhir hardly mattered though. Even before that incident he had taken to wafting his bat at balls well outside off stump trying to dab them to point and missing. It came as absolutely no shock therefore when he edged one such ball behind trying to do the same thing a couple of overs later. It was another failure to convert a start and he also had run out Cheteshwar Pujara the ball before the catch incident which may start to invite some unwelcome comparisons to Shane Watson. But the rest of the Indian top order had fared either no better or even worse. Virender Sehwag played a loose drive the first ball after lunch and was bowled by an admitted beauty from Swann. Sachin Tendulkar pushed forward to a ball outside off for only five. Only Yuvraj Singh can say that he got a good ball, but he did not look like hanging about anyway. India’s captain seemed to embody their spirit by limply hanging his bat outside off to only the third delivery he faced. It was an absolutely terrible shot by any batsman, coming from the captain at such a point was absolutely appalling. The only way MS Dhoni could have more obviously surrendered is if he had actually taken a white flag out to the crease with him. And the sad part was that it felt more inevitable than anything else.

But luckily for Dhoni and India the message never got to Ravichandran Ashwin. He played a fantastic innings in Mumbai that appeared to help save India in the first innings, though it proved to be in vain, and this was very similar. He actually fought. HIs entire top and middle order had given up and mentally gone to Nagpur, but Ashwin almost single-handedly made sure they would be going there with some shred of dignity intact. It made for an incredibly frustrating last session for England who can justifiably think that they should have had a day off tomorrow. But as well as Ashwin played, England are partly culpable for their inability to finish the innings off. They seemed to relax a bit too much when the eighth wicket went down and just like they did in the first innings started to put too much store in keeping Ishant Sharma on strike. The result was a pair of grinding partnerships that have avoided an innings defeat for India and made sure the teams will come back tomorrow. Neither of those looked even possible half an hour after tea.

It is a moral victory for India, but it will still take a miracle for it to be anything but that. England need one wicket with the new ball tomorrow morning and then will have to knock off about fifty runs. Like in Mumbai, they will not be troubled and will go 2-1 up in the series. Perhaps on the way to Nagpur Ashwin can explain the concept of resistance to his colleagues.

Calcutta, day three: England 509-6

Five hundred and nine for six is an excellent score in any scenario. And England are in a commanding position in the Test, leading by 193 with four first innings wickets in hand. But oddly England actually could have been in an even better position and might be a bit disappointed that they aren’t. The scorecard is actually a bit of an odd one. There is only one poor score, that of Ian Bell, but there is also only one century and England actually lost five wickets for 115 runs in thirty overs on either side of tea. With England playing five number elevens in this Test it actually did feel like a very important partnership at the end of the day between Matt Prior and Graeme Swann.

I said yesterday that India needed to pick up their attitude in the field otherwise the match would get completely out of hand and to their credit they did do that. They bowled threatening spells and kept the batsmen cautious for long periods in much the same way England did on the first day. The difference was that England had runs already on the board and two of the most patient batsmen in the world at the crease so the breakthrough did not come until halfway through the afternoon session. But India’s bowling had the effect that when Trott did fall, getting forward to a good ball from Ojha that spun away and took the edge, England had only put on 122 in the day instead of the 150+ they likely had in mind. India never ran through England, but after that the same combination of testing deliveries and batsman error that worked so well for England resulted in another collapse. India’s fielding was never above average, but it finally reverted back to shambolic with a bit under an hour remaining and Prior and Swann were free to add a quickfire 56 to crush India’s hopes of keeping the deficit under two hundred. The fact that India could not keep the intensity up for an entire day is still problematic for them, though after two days in the field it is understandable.

The biggest event of the day was the run out of Alastair Cook. This was what finally gave India some momentum as Cook was looking well set for a double hundred and then some. But he was run out in a bizarre way when he was backing up and leapt to avoid a sharp throw from Virat Kohli which hit the stumps. Although Cook was taking evasive action, the fact that he had not left his ground to do so meant that he was still out. Agonisingly for Cook he had come very close to grounding his bat before pulling away and it was this which cost him. If he had simply let the ball hit him he would no doubt have had two hundred and more to his name, but it looked like an instinct for self preservation took over and cost him. It is worth remembering, however, that he had been dropped already on 17 and then again in the morning when Ishant Sharma put down a very simple chance. It was an unlucky way for Cook to get out, but he had already had plenty of luck.

England would have been hoping to get the lead past two hundred by stumps tonight and ideally be in a position to get it to three hundred around lunchtime tomorrow. They didn’t quite manage the first part (and only came close because Swann and Prior scored so quickly before stumps) and I don’t think another hundred is on the cards either. England have four wickets in hand, but the next three batsmen are Jimmy Anderson, Steven Finn and Monty Panesar. Swann has done well to get to 21* and if he can get a few more with Prior England could still get close to six hundred, but I don’t see the last three surviving all the way to lunch. My guess is that England will be bowled out with a lead between 225 and 260. It will certainly be a very good lead though and India will probably have to bat well into the last day to save the Test regardless of how many England get tomorrow morning. That does not look like it will be easy with the pitch starting to take quite a lot of turn and if England bowl with the same patient but threatening approach tomorrow I think India will struggle keep enough wickets in hand for the last day.

Calcutta, day two: England 216-1

The second day of the Calcutta Test will be remembered mostly as the one on which Alastair Cook set two records. Upon reaching 88* not out he became the youngest player in history to 7,000 Test runs, displacing a certain Sachin Tendulkar. Twelve runs later he became the first Englishman ever to score 23 Test centuries, passing the record of 22 that had been set by Wally Hammond over seventy years prior. And for good measure the hundred also meant that he extended his record with now a hundred in each of his first five matches as captain.

Cook did offer one chance in his innings; during a difficult spell after lunch he edged a ball from Zaheer Khan low to slip where it went through Cheteshwar Pujara’s hands to continue a poor Test for him. But Cook settled down against the spinners, including lofting a straight six off Ravichandran Ashwin, and looking in command thereafter. He and Nick Compton, who made his maiden Test fifty in the innings, did a fantastic job taking singles and squeezing out extra runs as well. Neither really took the attack to the bowlers or crashed boundary after boundary, as one would expect, but England still scored 99 runs in the afternoon thanks to some relentless running between the wickets. It even brought out a few replays of the Sehwag run out from yesterday on the BCCI broadcast and the contrast was stark.

One of the effects of this style of play was that India appeared to give up again. It is something to which they are very much prone; we saw it many times in Australia and England last year. Once Cook and Compton got well settled and scoring fairly freely India did not seem to have any plans to get a wicket and were utterly lacklustre in the field. Even after Compton played a poor shot to give his wicket away (albeit with a very small umpire error also involved) India did not pick up the energy and go after Jonathan Trott at all. One ball spun sharply and beat the edge of Trott, but other than that he was allowed to settle in for the hour before stumps and he made it to 21* overnight. India are still (exactly) a hundred runs ahead, but they seemed tonight like they were bowling for a declaration and it is the same thing that we saw in the last three Tests in England and two of the Tests in Australia. They just don’t seem to have any fight when things start going against them and in a situation like this it is a very bad trait to have. They are by no means out of this match after only two days, but if they do not turn their attitude around tomorrow they will be and out of any chance to win the series to boot.

The only criticism of what was otherwise a dominant performance by England today was the bowling to the last wicket partnership this morning. After getting Khan and Ishant Sharma out cheaply and early England reverted to the tactic of doing everything they could to get Dhoni off strike so they could bowl to Pragyan Ojha instead. India managed to put on twenty for that partnership including two huge sixes from Dhoni and in the end it was he who got out anyway. The Indian batsmen had struggled throughout the innings, but England simply decided not to try to get one of them out at the end and gift him some runs. It was very frustrating and if they had just bowled at Dhoni in the first place there is every chance they would have bowled India out for under three hundred. It may be a minor point in the grand scheme of the Test, but it is something I would like to see England approach better in the future.

Tomorrow could see England take a strangle-hold on this Test if India do not perform better than they did for most of today. India need to make sure England do not bat through the day and they probably need a wicket with the new ball when it becomes due about half an hour into play. If Cook and Trott see the shine off the second new ball though and continue to set a platform then India will have the problem of Kevin Pietersen. I often become frustrated with Pietersen’s approach, but if he comes in with England almost 300-2 and the Indian attack toiling then it will be the perfect time for him to play one of his aggressive innings and India could find themselves in a massive hole very quickly. They must dislodge Cook or Trott early enough to still have a decent chance at Pietersen.

In the Test at the Eden Gardens in February of 2010 South Africa were bowled out for 296 in the first innings before India responded with over six hundred and ultimately an innings victory. A lot could still change, but England have given themselves a chance to recreate the pattern of that Test and they need to keep their heads tomorrow morning and continue pushing toward a huge score.

Calcutta, day one: India 273-7

The nadir of the day for England was probably a little over half an hour after the start of play. An hour before that Alastair Cook had once again failed to accurately predict how the coin would land and MS Dhoni unsurprisingly opted to bat. It quickly became apparent that all the talk of a sporting wicket with ‘pace and bounce’ was either mistaken or deliberately deceptive. The wicket was actually very like the one in Ahmedabad with nothing in it for the bowlers and even though the early morning conditions did result in some swing it was so slow and generally so late it had little effect. It was clearly a great toss to win and India were settling in with Virender Sehwag scoring quickly.

After that, however, it was England’s day. India gifted England the first wicket with a comedy run out; an absolutely terrible bit of miscommunication resulted in Gautam Gambhir not bothering to run for an easy third whilst Sehwag tried desperately to get back in his ground from halfway down the wicket. He failed and England had a vital wicket. From there England bowled very well for the rest of the day. There was still almost nothing in the pitch for them, but for the most part they maintained a very disciplined line and length and almost always contrived to be threatening. It is that last part which was important; it wasn’t just defensive bowling from England. Steven Finn was getting just a bit of extra bounce from his height and Gambhir in particular was having trouble with it. Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann got enough turn to make the batsmen think twice before doing anything too rash. The combined result was that the Indian batsmen got not only tied down, but actually under pressure and made errors.

But the pick of the bowlers was James Anderson. He was simply superb all day keeping the ball in the corridor or uncertainty and just getting it to move a bit and was the only bowler to actually take his wickets directly. Twice he managed to take the outside edge of a bat with a ball just close enough to the stumps to draw the shot and moving fractionally away. Just before stumps he then bowled a similar ball to Ravichandran Ashwin which nipped in and hit middle and off. He should have had a fourth wicket as well when he trapped Yuvraj Singh in front but it was given not out. Had there been DRS the decision would have been reversed. It was the kind of bowling we saw from Anderson in the last two winters when he defied unhelpful pitches and this time he actually got some of the reward he deserved. He will come out with a new ball tomorrow morning with a chance for a deserved five wicket haul.

The other wickets to fall were gifted to various extents, although as mentioned they were at least to an extent also the result of the threatening balls that were being bowled so consistently. Swann’s one wicket came when Singh played one of the laziest drives one will ever see to an innocuous delivery and managed to pick out extra cover. Panesar was the beneficiary of Cheteshwar Pujara playing all around a straight one and Gambhir trying to cut a ball that wasn’t quite there and that bounced a little bit more. In the case of Panesar, the deliveries had some merit to them and the wicket of Gambhir was borderline between bowler success and batsman error.

The day definitely belonged to England; the pitch has 450+ written on it and India aren’t going to get near that unless their tail bat extremely well. But England still have to finish the innings off tomorrow and then have to get up to a good score themselves. They have made an excellent start, but despite the fact that the chasing team has won the first two Tests they will still want to make sure they get a decent first innings lead to minimise the target. India’s 273-7 is well below par, but England are still a long way off a commanding lead even if they get the last three wickets quickly.

Steven Finn’s knee

With a recall for Steven Finn looking very likely for the Calcutta Test, there will almost certainly be more discussion about his recurring problem of kicking the stumps in his delivery stride. It’s something that has gone from a mild curiosity to almost a controversy after Graeme Smith claimed during the summer that it was a distraction and the umpire called a dead ball. Since then the ICC drafted in a playing condition for the T20 World Cup that the first instance would be a warming and anything further would be a dead ball. Since this has tended to penalise the batsmen more than the bowler (assuming it’s roughly random it is far more likely to impact a run-scoring delivery than a wicket-taking one) there have been suggestions that a version of ‘advantage’ should be called or even an outright no-ball.

But both the ICC’s response and the calls for a harsher punishment are silly. Finn is not the first bowler to occasionally kick the stumps and whilst it most certainly is something he would be well advised to stop doing it, there is no need for the ICC to come up with a new regulation about it. If it is a distraction then the batsman can inform the umpires and risk losing out on a scoring shot or they could pull out as they would do for any other distraction. They do so quite late for other distractions without any problem. But whether or not it really is a distraction is something that entirely rests with the batsman at the crease; none of the batsmen before Smith seemed to have a problem with it and whilst I am sceptical that he did either that should not really matter. If the batsman says it’s a distraction then the umpires need to take him at his word, but it is a mistake to draft in a blanket regulation covering all batsmen as clearly not all of them find it problematic. Giving a ‘warning’ is even more ridiculous. If the batsman is distracted and gets out because of it then why should it be different if it is the first instance or the second instance?

What I suspect, however, is that the warning is an artefact of the apparent thinking of the ICC and several others that this is supposed to be a punishment for the bowler so he gets one warning. This also explains the suggestion that there should be an advantage or a no-ball. But they all completely miss the fact that the bowler has done nothing for which he should be punished! He has contravened no laws and as is evidenced by the large number of times it has happened before this episode he has not gained an unfair advantage either. It would be as ridiculously unfair to punish the bowler for kicking the stumps as it would be to call a no-ball every time someone walked in front of the sightscreen. There is no merit to the notion that if the batsman gets a run it was not a distraction, but if he gets out it was. Batsmen get out without being distracted all the time and they cannot have this both ways. It’s either a distraction and therefore a dead ball or it isn’t, but it is certainly not like the bowler overstepping and gaining an unfair advantage by bowling closer to the stumps.

If the Indian batsmen lose runs to dead balls and are not happy about it then they should tell the umpire they do not find kicking the stumps to be a distraction. If the umpires call it anyway then it is a) a mistake by the umpires and ICC, not the bowler, and b) something I am sure the BCCI will change in no time at all.