England left in trouble as they lose three top-order wickets after Shubman Gill's chanceless 269 saw India post a mammoth 587

England have fallen asleep in Birmingham – and their only chance of preserving their series lead going into next week’s third Test at Lord’s is to wake up. The evidence of the first two days suggests they may need a cattle prod.

Replying to India’s mountainous 587 – the third-highest total England have conceded after inserting the opposition – they lost Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope for ducks, and Zak Crawley for 19, all playing frazzled strokes after spending eight and a half hours being slow-roasted in the field by Shubman Gill.

Had England’s top order, so lethal in Leeds, been watching as India’s captain made a chanceless 269, his country’s highest score outside Asia. If they had, they disregarded the masterclass.

Duckett prodded Akash Deep to Gill at third slip, before Pope tried to work his first delivery from off stump through midwicket, an ambitious stroke even with your eye in. Instead, the ball flew off the leading edge to second slip, where KL Rahul held a juggling catch, sending a large Indian contingent at a packed Edgbaston into ecstasy. Two Headingley centurions gone, just like that.

The carnage was not over. With the total on 25, Crawley essayed a flat-footed waft at Mohammed Siraj and offered catching practice to Karun Nair at first slip. At stumps, with both Joe Root and Harry Brook flirting with danger, England had reached 77 for three, still 510 behind.

‘It’s tired minds and tired bodies,’ said assistant coach Jeetan Patel. ‘You put in that much effort, and it’s not just physical, it’s mental as well.’

It was not meant to be like this against an Indian side who had rested their spearhead Jasprit Bumrah and spent the time between their harrowing defeat at Headingley and this match in a fug of indecision. Even the pre-match talk had suggested they would be happy to leave Edgbaston with a draw.

Everyone agreed they were there for the taking. But a combination of Ben Stokes’s decision to bowl, Gill’s magnificence, and a pitch as slow as Birmingham’s rush-hour traffic has boxed them into a corner from which they will need every bit of their Bazball bravado to emerge.

When India slipped to 211 for five on the first afternoon, despite all the marginal umpiring decisions going their way, Stokes might have expected a repeat of the Headingley heist, where he stuck them in, watched them make 471 and won anyway.

But if England thought they could simply recreate history, they reckoned without the silky determination of Gill. Pained by his team’s two collapses in Leeds, he strengthened the lower order and assumed personal control of the fightback.

Superb though he was, England were insipid. Of their four frontline seamers, only Josh Tongue bowled at all in the 41 overs after lunch, while Brook sent down five that were milked for 31.

For once, Stokes looked rudderless, and it didn’t take a leap of imagination to wonder how England might have fared on this lifeless surface had they – not India – been batting.

There was some logic in his decision, just as there had been in the first Test. But cricketing wisdom, accumulated over nearly 150 years of Test matches, still has its place. If the pitch looks flat, there has to be a good reason not to bat.

Gill, it’s only fair to point out, would have bowled too, but now feasted on the conditions to help turn India’s overnight 310 for five into their fourth-highest total in this country. His sixth-wicket stand with Ravindra Jadeja was worth 203 by the time Jadeja was bounced out by Tongue for 89, at which point Gill and Washington Sundar put on an effortless 144.

And though India’s last four fell for 29, they already had 558 on the board when the slide began. When Gill pulled Tongue to Pope at square leg, he walked off to an ovation that recognised what he had done: reinvigorated India and demoralised England.

It didn’t help that Brydon Carse was struggling with a blister on the sore toe that he half-jokingly considered amputating, nor that Stokes needs to look after his own body. Woakes, too, stayed out of the firing line after lunch, perhaps with his bowling average of 12 at Lord’s in mind.

The onus, then, rested on the young shoulders of off-spinner Shoaib Bashir, whose three expensive wickets took his haul in this series to six at nearly 60. Meanwhile, Root’s dismissal of the left-handed Sundar, bowled by an off-break that beat his defensive push, will only encourage India’s spinners.

It is possible England will take the field at Lord’s with an entirely fresh pace attack of Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson and even Jamie Overton. The trouble is, they went into this game planning to arrive there 2–0 up. After two days in Birmingham, even 1–0 would represent a triumph.