IND vs ENG: 3 best innings that shaped the outcome of a riveting series
The recently concluded Test series between India and England ended with the hosts India dismantling all the promises and high level of performances that the tourists had offered at the start of the series.
The hosts were high on their incredible achievement in Australia where they had trumped Australians in their own backyard, and England defeated in the first game of the series to ensure the expectations from them were to only increase in the series.
After the defeat in the first Test, Indian team management decided to neutralise the effects of toss and hence pitches that supported spin from the first day of the game were produced in the series, except for the last game, when the curators at the Narendra Modi Stadium was under pressure for the third Test that lasted only one and a half days.
As the pitches were challenging, the onus was on batsmen from either side to bring their teams in the game before bowlers could mount pressure on the opposition.
Here we are enlisting the three best innings by batsmen from either side in the series
Rohit Sharma- 161- 1st innings, second Test, Chennai
Coming into the second Test, Rohit Sharma was under enormous pressure following two low scores in the first Test, and the subsequent heavy loss the team faced in the first game.
The pitch was not perfect for Rohit, who relies on the pace on the ball to score runs, and deliveries were turning square from the first ball. He saw Shubman Gill who looked in terrific touch in the first Test departing after misjudging a ball even before he could get his eye in.
Rohit looked like a man on a mission and had a clear vision on how he wanted to score runs and at the same time, how he wanted to defend the spin twins of Jack Leach and Moeen Ali.
Leach had dismissed him in the first Test with a one that turned past his outside edge to hit the stumps, and Rohit made sure the left-arm spinner was not allowed to settle in his rhythm to produce such jaffas again.
All other batsmen struggled to cope up with the raging turn that the pitch was offering, and Rohit had seen his partners in Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli—who are considered champion players of spin bowling getting dismissed in either too defensive or too aggressive modes, and hence Rohit mixed caution with aggression.
He went right back in his crease to defend whenever spinners allowed him a bit of space, while his main scoring shot was sweep which was employed perfectly by England batsmen in the previous game. The bounce on that pitch was not true, but lack of variations in pace by England spinners was spotted fairly early by Rohit and put them away en route to a superlative century.
His reluctance to come forward forced spinners to bowl full at him and he jumped down the track to hit them over the top. For the most part of his innings, Rohit appeared to be batting on a different surface than the other batsmen including Joe Roots and Virat Kohli.
Rohit silenced his critics with that century that could well be a career-defining century and will not be forgotten by fans as an innings f highest order on a raging turner.
Rishabh Pant- 1st innings, Fourth Test, Ahmedabad
Rishabh Pant had emerged as one of the most prominent heroes of Indian cricket on the tour of Australia with two swashbuckling knocks to rattle the home side. However, there were scepticisms about his wicketkeeping and hence it was a tough call for the Virat Kohli-led team management o back him on Indian pitches that will test his skills behind the wickets against high-quality spinners. Pant’s run-scoring and match-winning abilities were too much to overlook and he got the backing from the team management.
He was fluent and aggressive to start off the series and played some handy knock, but like the best of batsmen, had kept his best for the final game of the series when a place in the World Test Championship Final was at stake for his team.
On the second day of the final Test, the Indian batting order was on the verge of yet another collapse as all batsmen failed to rise to the occasion in front of a disciplined England bowling attack. Anderson was whopping the ball around, while Stokes was into his heroics with the ball.
The score was around 150-6 when Pant was joined by Washington Sundar, leaving only Axar Patel with some batting credentials to bail India out of trouble.
Pant was not defensive due to the situation and took calculative risks against Joe Root to put England skipper, who had taken a sensation fifer in the last game under some sort fo pressure, and to push the fielders back. His ploy worked and he could rotate strike easily with Washington.
England were playing a bowler a short and one of the four men tasked with bowling was not feeling comfortable on the ground. In his mind, Pant had all of that sorted, and he knew the intensity from the bowlers will dip at some point, and he curbed his go-all out attitude to wait for that moment.
Root got flummoxed at the moment and he asked Stokes to bowl just before the second new ball and that left only Anderson with some energy left while bowling with the new ball.
As soon as Anderson ran in with the new SG ball, the transformation of a calm Pant into the Pant all know was quick as he danced down the track to hit Anderson over his head for a four to send the signal to Root that it was him who was dictating terms and not the pacer. He dished out similar treatment to Ben Stokes in the next over and a nearly-exhausted Stokes could only offer a wry smile in appreciation of Pant’s brilliance.
If getting hit over the top was not enough for Anderson, in the next over, Pant reverse scooped him over the crowded slip cordon to stamp his authority on the game and state that he has arrived on the stage to rewrite the laws with the audacity to scoop one of the finest pacer that the game has ever produced.
He went quickly after scoring the century in a big relief to England, but by then, he had done enough harm to the fighting spirit of the England team and it was all exemplified in the helpless nod Anderson gave after the reverse scoop over the slips.
Joe Root- 218, 1st innings, First Test, Chennai
England were triumphant in Sri Lanka, but the challenge of taking on India, who were over the moon after Australia win was a monumental one for Joe Root’s men.
Root was in colossal form with the bat in the two-match Test series against Sri Lanka and had scores in excess of 200 and 180 on pitches that supported spin bowling from the word go. Root was aware of the challenges his teammates were to face, and hence his own form was crucial for England’s success against India.
Luckily for him and his side, he won the first toss of the series and ecstatically decided to bat first on a pitch that was later rated as flat as a road. The openers gave him a perfect platform to start off the series, and Root knew the only way India could have been put under pressure was to score a big first-innings run and he put his head down for one of the best innings he has ever played in his eight-year-long career.
Root also knew India did not have the accuracy of Ravindra Jadeja and hence the onus was on Ashwin in his absence. He was confident of his game against the other two Indian spinners in Shahbaz Nadeem and Washington Sundar and started taking the game to them.
He played with their minds and unleashed both the conventional and reverse sweep to unsettle their lengths. None of them could rise to the challenge and the pitch as flat as it was, did not offer them any assistance to fall back to, and Root kept on coming at them in pursuit of big runs.
There was not much help for pacers either, but Ishant Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah found some swing with the older ball, but till then, Root had got his eyes in at the crease and on the big, first innings total to mount pressure on India.
Once he got comfortable with other bowlers, the task of unsettling Ashwin was also on as the off-spinner kept on searching for some sort of help from the surface. Root stopped only after completing his double century that left India so far behind the game.
Root would be disappointed he could not carry on with his form and could not score any more fifty in the series after that quality double hundred, but pragmatically, his innings in the first Test sent panic into the Indian set up and hence they thought of taking the toss out of equations without and out turners in the next two games.
The two sides will meet each other once again later this year in English summer when they will be pitted against the swing and seam bowling skills of each other.
