1st Test Day 4 Report: Defensive England provide Kohli's India an escape route in Chennai

The fourth day of the Test at the Chepauk began with the hosts India trailing badly behind the tourists in their first innings, and ended with the familiar script of the hosts battling to walk away with a draw.

They must have been delighted at the timid tactics shown by the England side as they never looked like seizing the opportunity and making a statement. Instead, they allowed India to bowl them out on the in the final session of the day and left only a handful overs to their bowlers to come against Indian batsmen. 

To be fair to Root and the English team management, the recent developments in Test cricket when the West Indies chased down a monumental total in Bangladesh and South Africa coming close to chasing against an impressive bowling lineup, must have paid on their minds. 

Additionally, the heroics of the Indian batting order in their last Test at the Gabba would have also made life difficult for the tourists as they were weighing the option of eliminating the threat of losing the game or allowing enough overs to the bowlers to take 20 Indian wickets on a day five pitch at  Chepauk.

In the end, Indian openers Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill had to negotiate only 13 overs, but Jack Leach showed signs of finding his groove back as he got a delivery to turn sharply in front of Rohit’s bat from the line of his off stump and the right-hander had to take a long and dismal journey back to the pavilion. Rohit was coming in with some sort of pressure of not making his good form count in Australia, and he would be disappointed to miss out on a pitch where batting was significantly easier in the first innings, while his team needed him to come good in the second.

Pujara and Gill never looked out of depth after Rohit’s departure, and India will take heart from their stay at the crease in the late passage of play on the fourth day. 

For England, the onus was on Leach and Dominic Bess, and one of them delivered with the big wicket of Rohit, while the duo will be itching to bowl on the fifth-day pitch and establish their credentials as match-winning bowlers in India.

England had the perfect opportunity to up the tempo of the game and force a tougher target of facing more overs to India, but they adopted a defensive approach, which the experts fear may well come back to haunt them if they end up falling short in this Test and the series going forward. 

On the other hand, the defensive ploy must have delighted the Indian camp and Kohli decided to slow the game down by opting to contain batsmen while keeping the catching fielders close to them.

The move paid dividend as Ashwin redeemed himself in the second innings after harsh rumbling on the first two days of the game where he could not get any sort of assistance whatsoever. He picked up his 28th five-wicket haul in Tests, and almost all those wickets were earned by his usual methods.

Opener Rory Burns was lured to come forward, and defeated by extra bounce, while another left-hander Ben Stokes was caught behind the wicket after enticing him to go for an expensive drive through the cover region.

From the other end, both pacers Jasprit Bumrah and Ishant Sharma shoed remarkable control over their line of attack and Ishant went on to pick up his 300th Test wickets when he stuck Dan Lawrence with a fairly new ball his hand. 

Both he and Bumrah got the reverse swing going, and they stuck to the task of attacking stumps with three close-in fielders on the leg side, and they were able to disable Englishmen from getting away with the game, while also picking up wickets at regular intervals.

Earlier at the start of the day, India’s hopes of resurrecting the innings and avoiding the situation of following on on the back of Washington Sundar and Ravichandran Ashwin were jolted early by Leach who is appearing to come back strongly after the onslaught at the hands of Rishabh Pant on the previous day.

Washington Sundar did his chances no harm and batted with exquisite timing and placement and put on display what he can bring to the table with the bat, and he may well have complicated the selection affair for the team management going ahead in the second Test at the same ground. 

He played some exuberant shots, and one of the shots of James Anderson was played with so much flair and swagger that it would have made Yuvraj Singh smile wherever he would be watching the game from. Sadly for him and most importantly for the team, he ran out of a partner and was left stranded 15 runs away from what could have been an exemplary Test hundred given the context of the game.

England have a clear edge in this game, but the Indian team would have bought the position they find themselves in at the starts of the play today. They have their nine wickets intact and 98 overs to negotiate. 

They are in pursuit of more 381 runs which looks unlikely to start with, but all of their heroes from the heroics of Gabba are still unbeaten and the team management will be hoping they will be replicating their performance one more time, at least to save the game and embarrassment of losing a Test match for the first time since 2017.

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