INDIA TOUR OF ENGLAND, 2022

No donut for India this time on the fifth day

Mohammed Siraj gave away 98 runs from 15 overs in the second innings.
Mohammed Siraj gave away 98 runs from 15 overs in the second innings. ©Getty

It was no strange situation for India, heading into this final day's play in Birmingham. In fact, it was playing right into the theme of the series.

Right through the five Tests, there's not been a fifth day where India have set foot as favourites. The one time they towed that line at Trent Bridge, needing a further 157 runs with nine wickets in hand, it rained all day. They didn't even make it that far at Headingley. And at Lord's and Oval, where they recorded their twin victories, they had their backs up against the wall before a special performance or two earned them a win deep into the final session.

Which is where this final day at Edgbaston felt different; the match barely made it past 90 minutes.

India captain Jasprit Bumrah looked back at the loss and reckoned that it was the fourth afternoon when they "fell short with the bat" and "let the opposition in". Unraveling against the short ball then, they couldn't quite bat England out of the game. Against this side this summer, you do that at your own risk, but nothing papers over the fact that India couldn't defend a total of 378.

It was India's third overseas loss on the trot and all three saw them conceding an easy-paced chase in the fourth innings. Even if they were defending only 240 at Wanderers and 212 at Newlands against South Africa, those were in conditions that had far more happening with the ball. And yet, India lost both the games by seven wickets, much like they did here against England.

"It is something that we need to look at and work on. We have been very good in the last few years... being able to take those wickets but yeah, we haven't been able to do it over the last few months," India head coach Rahul Dravid said after the loss at Edgbaston. "Could be a variety of factors. Maybe we need to maintain that intensity and maybe we need to maintain that level of fitness, maintain that level of performance right through a Test match.

"Also in all these Test matches, the batting has also not been up to the scratch in the third innings as well. So both in South Africa and here, we have started well but haven't been able to finish well. Certainly, we need to get better at that and improve.".

It will be unfair to paint all three defeats with a common brush. They happened for two different Indian teams under three different captains, in two different circumstances and of course against two different oppositions, but all of them point to how India's bowling struggles when Mohammed Shami and Bumrah don't pick wickets.

Like here at Edgbaston, India's change seamers in Mohammed Siraj and Shardul Thakur picked 0 for 163 between them, bowling zero maidens while conceding runs at nearly 6.3 per over. India needed them to step up in the fourth innings, especially given that Shami and Bumrah had bowled long, near continuous spells in the first innings. The rain stoppages at the time had allowed them to come back fresh and bowl 32 of the first 36 overs, but it also meant that they had little left in the tank come the fourth innings. India's second innings collapse from 190/4 to 245 all out gave their little time to recover and when they were back, they had to bowl in tandem with Ravindra Jadeja who often wraps up his overs inside a minute.

Jadeja, too, had a role to play but as Kevin Pietersen reckoned on air, the left-arm spinner was bowling a flat trajectory and as a result, often missed the rough outside the right-hander's leg-stump. It wasn't the first time that's happened either. Good time to wind back to 2014, when India had preferred him to Ravichandran Ashwin, then more on batting promise than potential, and struggled for breakthroughs on a pitch offering turn as early as the fourth afternoon. It took a special spell from Ishant Sharma on such a surface to deliver the win, with five of his seven wickets coming off short balls. Even though Ishant would later turn into a bowler who liked his long boring spells, that's exactly what India seemed to miss in this fifth Test.

Ishant, and his methods of bowling dry, was also the missing link a few months ago in South Africa. Coming in as first-change bowler, he would often keep the pressure up during his 8-9 over spells and make the opposition "earn every run" in Bharat Arun's words. In the second Test in Johannesburg, Siraj alone provided that release in a small run-chase, bowling his six overs for 37 runs. A week later in the deciding Test in Cape Town, both Umesh Yadav and Ashwin conceded runs at over 4.3 runs an over in an even smaller run-chase. Ishant saw all that from the dressing room.

Against England and their aggressive approach, India's inability to stitch together maidens stood out even more. A run-chase of 378 was ticked off at a run-rate of nearly five runs an over. That's unheard of in the history of Test cricket. To England's credit though, they started aggressively against the new ball, leaving India a bit taken aback. Later when the visitors wanted some damage control in terms of spin with the old ball, Bairstow and Root with their reverse-sweeps didn't allow Jadeja to do that. For that reason, India couldn't rotate Shami and Bumrah from one end and all that added up to a tired couple of bowlers on the final day.

"Coming to the last day, the wicket has not really spun, you know. Whether it was Jack Leach or Ravindra Jadeja who bowled in the Test match. Because maybe the weather played a part in the first three days, there weren't long phases of sun and the wicket did not break up as we might have expected it to. It did not spin as much as we expected. It is easy to look back at the fifth day and say it would have been nice to have another spinner, but it did not turn enough to justify that. I think we accept that they played really well, we could have just hit the areas better in the fourth innings," he added.

India indeed finished the series with a lot of what-ifs. It was in complete contrast to how they started it, fresh from their series win in Australia and looking forward to some more of that in England. A lot since then has changed for them and it showed in how this fifth day at office stood out from the other two in the series.

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