3 weeks ago
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England’s Bazballian principles will be tested to their limits on Sunday after India set them a notional target of 608 to win the second Test at Edgbaston.
Ben Stokes’ team have reinvigorated the traditional format of the game with their no-limits policy, but India have raised the bar beyond the improbable here. The world record chase in Test cricket stands at 418; England’s own high of 378 came in the previous meeting of these two teams at this ground three years ago.
Three new-ball wickets on the fourth evening, two from Jasprit Bumrah’s excellent stand-in Akash Deep, have altered the challenge ahead, however. Everyone knows this England team can attack, but having taken a 1-0 lead at Headingley last week, are they able to preserve it?
Forecast Sunday morning rain made the decision by the otherwise brilliant Shubman Gill to delay the declaration deep into the evening session look curious - at 4.46pm, the first chorus of ‘Boring, boring India’ rang out from the Eric Hollies Stand.
Never have India scored as many runs as this in a Test match and yet still they ploughed on, beyond Gill’s dismissal for 161 - a steepling top edge the by-product of an attempt to hit a ninth six - to leave England with 108 overs to negotiate in theory.
Making them wait did the trick, though, as for the second time in the contest India used the new ball better than their opponents, preying on tired minds to leave England 72 for three at the close: Zak Crawley registered the seventh duck amongst the hosts with a lame drive to gully, before Deep sliced through the defences of Ben Duckett and Joe Root, the latter contentiously so after replays suggested it came from a back foot no-ball.
Ben Stokes' England face a mammoth task to save the second Test against India on Sunday
Shubman Gill's second century of the match helped India set up a chase of 608 for England
Stokes and his side naturally set out to win the game but will not struggle to force a draw
Deep’s boot appeared to cut the return crease on landing, but went unchallenged by the Australian television umpire Paul Reiffel.
In a dramatic fourth evening finale, India also burnt two reviews as their dreams of achieving a famous win - from a match they appeared to have earmarked for a draw by leaving out attack spearhead Bumrah - moved nearer to reality.
Now it is England who, in theory at least, should settle for a stalemate in what is turning into another run-drenched series.
Chances of limiting those runs on the fourth day took a blow when Crawley spilled a howitzer of a drive to mid-on early in Rishabh Pant’s latest box office show.
Stokes, in his capacity as bowler, concealed his disappointment, but as captain he would have known that reducing India to 141 for four would have changed the pace of a game soon careering away from him.
Under the floodlights, England had bowled well early on day four, Brydon Carse deserving of more than just the slip-catch dismissal of Karun Nair in a 70-minute opening spell.
Josh Tongue also produced a pearler to cartwheel KL Rahul’s middle stump, but the only airborne wood for the remainder of India’s innings came whenever India’s devilish dasher Pant swung so hard that the bat came out of his hands.
To raucous cheers from another Birmingham full house, his first effort landed 25 yards away at square leg. Next ball, he was missed in a one-handed attempt at a catch by a sprawling Chris Woakes at midwicket.
Questions had been raised over Gill's reluctance to declare given India's sizeable lead
He has, though, led his side into a position where they will be almost certain winners when many thought they had marked the game as a draw
Pant was pure entertainment during a stand of 110 with Gill, the emerging superstars within this new-look Indian line-up showing with their performances that for all the glitz of Twenty20 cricket in their homeland, their views appear to align with former team-mate Virat Kohli, who said upon retiring in May that Test matches were five levels above any other format of cricket.
Kohli is right, of course, no one will remember their mayfly IPL contributions. Equally, few will forget the spectacle put on by the fourth-wicket pair as they teed up the fifth day victory push.
Having been missed on 10 and 31, Pant continued unfettered, lifting India’s advantage beyond 400 with his third and final six off Tongue, before another exuberant swipe ended the fun on 65.
The dilemma for Gill as he watched Pant’s bat orbit to square leg and the ball nestle in Ben Duckett’s hands at long-on was the size of the carrot to dangle an England team hellbent on entertainment.
It was testament to how feared England have become as chasers under Stokes and Brendon McCullum that India dropped a gear or two, sauntering towards tea, which Gill reached on an even 100.
Conservatism gave way to the long handle after the interval, though, as India’s new batting prince Gill made use of Edgbaston’s modest boundaries to set an Indian Test record of 11 match sixes.
His penultimate one made him the first player in Test history to hit a double hundred and 150 in the same match.
It has been an extraordinary start to a tour by anyone’s standards, let alone one with the hopes of a billion people on his shoulders, and his run-a-ball 161 took his overall tally to 585 off this England attack.
Zak Crawley registered the seventh duck as one of three tired England wickets to fall
England lynchpin Joe Root is also done for the game and it now looks ominous for the hosts
Gill will now threaten Sir Donald Bradman's record of 974 runs in a Test series - he is on 585
TOP SPIN AT THE TEST
By Lawrence Booth
Shubman Gill became the second Indian – after Sunil Gavaskar against West Indies at Port-of-Spain in 1970-71 – to score a double-century and a century in the same Test, and the first of any nationality to do so against England.
Gill’s total in this game of 430 has been bettered only once in a Test, by Graham Gooch, who made 333 and 123 against India at Lord’s in 1990.
Only two Indians have scored more runs in a Test series in England than the 585 Gill has made after only two games. Rahul Dravid made 602 in 2002, and Virat Kohli 593 in 2018.
Rarely has Sir Donald Bradman’s record of 974 runs in a Test series come under threat, but with three matches remaining, and in the form of his life, Gill now has to be a contender to surpass that 95-year-old record.
How England could do with someone replicating his devotion to long innings on Sunday if they are to avert heading to Lord’s next week with the series 1-1.
