India Pull Off Sensational Heist Against Negative England In Ranchi
The Ranchi pitch offered the two teams a simple proposition - win the toss, bat first, win the match. It offered the prospect of less bounce overall compared to the first three pitches, and more uneven bounce than the first three pitches. The uneven bounce would get more frequent as the match wore on, and winning the toss offered a nearly unassailable advantage.
IND offered ENG the gift of not having to face Jasprit Bumrah (17 wickets at less an 14 runs apiece in the first 3 Tests, a wicket every 28 balls). Then, Rohit Sharma lost the toss. There was no way ENG should have lost this Test match from that beginning on this pitch. It was going to be at its best for batting on the first day, and it would get worse with each session.
In this series, ENG have tended to pack their batting and not play enough bowling. At Ranchi, they seemed to attempt an even purer version of this. They played only four bowlers, and then proceeded to essentially ignore one of them. On a wicket where the main threat was uneven bounce, it remains a mystery as to why Ollie Robinson did not bowl an extended spell of wicket-to-wicket medium fast bowling with Ben Foakes standing up to the stumps in both innings in every session. For whatever reason, he didn’t. This placed an enormous workload on Shoaib Bashir and Tom Hartley who bowled very long spells in both innings and unsurprisingly tired towards the end of them.
It is all very well to say that Ben Stokes uses his spinners well (even though its not clear what this actually amounts to). But the more basic fact about ENG in this series is that they have been picking elevens to post runs, with the question of taking 20 wickets an afterthought. It doesn’t help them that one of their four bowlers is James Anderson. Anderson has 8 wickets in three Tests and has bowled fewer overs than Joe Root, a part-time off spinner. Anderson has 42 wickets at 30 apiece in India - a fine record for visiting fast bowler - until you see that its taken him 16 Tests to collect those 42 wickets - less than 3 wickets per Test match. When he’s one of the four bowlers, it puts an even greater strain on the other three.
In 2021 in IND, ENG lost a wicket every 42.1 balls to IND, and scored 19.8 runs per wicket. In 2024, on vastly better pitches (as uneven and low as the Ranchi wicket was, it was, without question, not as difficult as the last three pitches of the 2021 series), ENG have again lost a wicket every 42.1 balls to IND. This time, they’ve scored 26.9 runs per wicket. On those 2021 pitches, IND managed 28.4 runs per wicket, and lost a wicket every 51.1 balls to ENG’s bowlers. In the 2024 series, IND have scored 38.6 runs per wicket, and lost a wicket every 67.3 balls to the ENG bowlers.
In many ways, ENG’s 2024 series has been worse than their 2021 visit. In 2021, at least they made an effort to take 20 IND wickets, and picked sides with enough bowling depth to realistically pursue this. In 2024, ENG seemed to make no attempt to do this. Even though Ollie Robinson, Rehan Ahmed, Tom Hartley and Mark Wood can all bat (they produced 341 runs at 17.9 in the series between them), ENG didn’t play five bowlers. They packed their batting. This is a negative selection in Test cricket.
On the batting side, ENG fared about as well as other visiting sides in IND in recent years. Their openers scored runs, much as Dimuth Karunaratne, Dean Elgar, Usman Khawaja, Travis Head, Tom Latham and Keaton Jennings have done in IND in the last 10 years. Their middle order struggled, as middle orders have in India in the last 10 years. Joe Root, Steven Smith, Dinesh Chandimal, Mushfiqur Rahim, Marnus Labuschagne and Roston Chase are the only middle order bats to score more than 150 runs in India in the last 10 years averaging better than 40. To be sure, ENG’s methods were different to those of other visitors to IND in recent times. They took a lot of chances. They run out of luck sooner rather than later. ENG’s batters produced 300 runs off the bat in an innings only twice in 8 innings. In one of those, Ollie Pope played a once in a lifetime innings.
A comparison of the respective batting teams in 2021 and 2024 series above is instructive. IND did 10 runs per wicket better compared to 2021, while ENG did 7.5 runs per wicket better compared to 2021. ENG’s spinners managed 53 wickets in the 4 Tests at a cost of 38.5 apiece. They collected a wicket every 68.4 balls. IND’s spinners collected 51 wickets at 28.1 apiece. They collected a wicket every 46.1 balls. ENG’s fast bowlers managed 12 wickets at 46 apiece in the series, a wicket every 85 balls. IND’s fast bowlers collected 27 wickets at 23.3 apiece, and collected a wicket every 37.8 balls.
In every area - batting, spin bowling, fast bowling, and even keeper bats, IND have been superior to ENG over these four Tests. Much has been made of Shoaib Bashir’s returns in the Ranchi Test. His control of length was slightly better in Ranchi than he was in his debut Test. He overpitched less often in Ranchi. But, he also landed it short more often in Ranchi than he did in Vizag. The uneven bounce at Ranchi meant that pitching short was not as costly as it might have been at Vizag or Rajkot, or even Hyderabad. For comparison, see Ravindra Jadeja’s pitch map at Ranchi. (Maps attached below)
The 4th Test was the whole series in microcosm. ENG had enough bowling to exert some influence on proceedings by taking a few IND wickets. But once Hartley and Bashir tired, as they inevitably did, they turned the ball even less than they normally do. At their best, Hartley and Bashir and Rehan still got less turn and less drift than Jadeja or Ashwin or Kuldeep. The IND trio turn the ball hard and still maintain iron control over their length. This is what makes them world class spin bowlers. ENG had nobody to turn to on Hartley and Bashir tired. This happened in the first innings when Bashir continued to bowl in the last hour of the day, even though he had been bowling since the lunch break. It also happened in the 4th innings where Bashir and Hartley, at one stage, had bowled 45 of the 55 overs in the innings. It is not a surprise then, that IND’s bats kept recovering.
Much has been made of Bazball. My view of Bazball (or, as one wit aptly observed, “it should be called Bazbat!”) has been that it only trivially relevant as a competitive proposition. It does not help ENG win Tests which they’re not already likely to win. That is to say, when ENG’s bowling is better than the opposition’s, ENG win. When it is not, Bazball does not help them.
The surprising thing in this series has been that ENG have not even made a serious effort to pick an XI which would take 20 IND wickets. Joe Root has bowled over 100 overs in 4 Tests for ENG. Over his career, Root averages about 40 balls per Test. It has, by any reasonable measure, been one of ENG’s most negative squads to visit IND. It is perhaps fitting then, that even when they had their best chance on paper to win a Test in IND - IND had rested their best bowler, had an inexperienced middle order, lost a toss on a pitch where the toss was absolutely vital - ENG didn’t have enough bowling to seal the deal. They needed, at one stage, 3 balls to get to Akash Deep and Mohammad Siraj, with 72 runs to play with. Their tiring spin twins tried whatever they could, but it wasn’t enough.
IND used 17 players over 4 Tests. ENG used only 14. This would normally suggest that IND were the team in trouble. And they were. They missed 4-5 first choice players, and missed Ashwin for part of the 3rd Test. And yet, they were able to cobble together an XI to win the series with a Test to spare. It is their 17th consecutive series win in IND. As good as they are, they should not really have won this Ranchi Test after losing the toss. They should definitely not have won once they were 177/7 in response to 353 all out. That they did, is a measure of just how relentlessly attacking and aggressive they are, and just how negative ENG have been in this series.
The temperature in Dharamsala is currently in single digits in the middle of the afternoon. It may change ENG’s fortunes. But only if they pick a side which can take 20 IND wickets reasonably cheaply.
So many more questions remain to be asked of ENG’s approach in this series. But those are for another day. For now, IND have shown once again that they are the best team in the world, and one of the greatest teams of all time.
A great observation as always. The reason England is losing is because they are over indexing on batting to provide insurance for their cavalier batting approach. But that should also mean that the difference between the two teams in this series should be much wider than how close the series has been so far.
Their bowlers have still found ways to take wickets even with their limited resources and skillsets.
The gap in the averages and strike rates for Indian spinners vs English spinners that you have highlighted is significantly inflated because of two recent innings (3rd and 4th test's second innings).
I would like to see a comparison by excluding those 2 innings.
That could highlight how Indian spinners have not been significantly more consistent or dominating for large parts of the test series. Which is why the series feels lot closer than what those numbers suggest.