India win by 434 runs

This is a series between two contrasting teams. ENG have experienced batting and inexperienced bowling (especially spin). IND have inexperienced batting and experienced, high quality bowling. Their batting order has played 57, 7, 23, 2, 70, 1 and 1 Test caps, from Rohit Sharma to Dhruv Jurel. In Test cricket, the second team is vastly superior to the first, especially when both teams have an equally mature first class system. The IND batting has been under-powered all series. But they’ve put up enough runs to win the 2nd and 3rd Tests comfortably, and if it hadn’t been for Ollie Pope’s once in a lifetime innings in Hyderabad, would have won the series today.

Pope survived 75 false shots in his 196 in Hyderabad. No other ENG bat has survived more than 29 in an innings in the series. No IND bat has survived more than 35 in an innings in the series. Despite that innings, ENG won by only 28 runs.

I often point out that batting doesn’t really matter in Test cricket, while bowling doesn’t really matter in T20. In a Test match, the better bowling attack wins as a rule. In a T20 match, the better hitting line up wins as a rule. Upsets are less common in Test cricket than they are in T20, since the former is a longer contest and the effects of individual deliveries which go against form carry less weight than they do in the shorter T20 match. IND won the Rajkot Test with all the runs in their 2nd innings to spare.

One figure I’ve been watching all series, since the IND team worried about it after the first Test, is the percentage of runs ENG were able to score without hitting boundaries. In the 1st innings in Hyderabad, ENG score about 46% of their runs by means other than boundaries. In the 3rd innings, this rose to a whopping 55%. IND were keen to get this figure down. It is a measure of a bowling side’s control. Boundary hitting requires greater risk taking, and if a bowling side is conceding a large percentage of runs without requiring the batters to score boundaries, they’re not exerting enough control. In the 2nd and third Test, IND have gotten ENG’s non-boundary runs down to between 30-36% of their total score. They did this by altering their methods against the sweep. Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja were initially inclined to overpitch to get under the sweep shot. But the data showed that ENG were comfortable sweeping the overpitched ball. Consequently, the IND spinners decided to stick to their usual spinner’s good length, and force the batters to play the difficult, high risk sweep from the stumps.

The other striking difference between the two bowling attacks has been the fact that the IND spinners turn the ball more, and get significantly greater drift in the air compared to the ENG spinners. And both Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj get the old ball to move in the air and off the pitch more than the ENG bowlers do. Jasprit Bumrah’s ability to move the ball in the air and off the pitch at will has been a remarkable feature of the series. His delivery to dismiss ENG’s in-form opener Zak Crawley, for instance, swung out 0.85 degrees and then moved in 0.96 degrees off the pitch. This is what allowed Bumrah to beat the inside edge of Crawley’s bat. The ball was hitting the top of leg stump to the centimeter.

There is, inevitably a lot of discussion about Bazball following ENG’s defeat. Joe Root’s attempt at a reverse-scoop against Jasprit Bumrah on the 3rd morning was a stark reminder at the amount of risk involved in Bazball. But to fixate on the risk is to miss the point. ENG’s problem is not that their batters are taking risks which are not coming off. ENG’s problem is that their bowlers are not forcing the IND batters to take risks to score. Ravindra Jadeja, Shubman Gill, Rohit Sharma, Sarfaraz Khan and Yashasvi Jaiswal are all free scoring batters, but their life has been relatively straight forward. They keep the good balls out and hit the frequently over pitched or under pitched deliveries. Ravindra Jadeja over (fuller than 11 ft) or under (shorter than 18 ft) pitches 16% of his deliveries. Tom Hartley, ENG’s best spin bowler, does this 22.6% of his deliveries, while Rehan Ahmed does it 25.5% of his deliveries. Kuldeep Yadav does it 21% of his deliveries. But only 8% of Kuldeep’s deliveries are short pitched, while 13% of Rehan Ahmed’s deliveries are short pitched. Much of the time, when Jadeja and Kuldeep over-pitch, they do so by design. Ashwin has over or under pitched 17.4% of the time in this series. Only 6% of Ashwin’s deliveries are short pitched.

ENG’s batters take a lot of risks. As they’ve discovered over six innings, in which they have collectively failed to produce 300 runs off the bat in five, it is difficult to sustain this risk taking for the necessary volume of runs, even if they are not batting on a fresh wicket on the first morning which offers the bowling side some help. Eventually, they run out of luck. IND have induced a false shot from an ENG bat every 4.3 balls, and ENG score 2.8 runs per false shot. ENG have induced a false shot once every 6.8 balls, and IND score 3.9 runs per false shot.

This has been the story of the Bazball era for ENG. In series where their bowling attack is better than the opposition’s bowling attack (in PAK, v SA in ENG, v NZ in NZ, v IND in ENG), ENG tend win. In series where it is roughly equally good or weaker (v AUS in England, in NZ, in IND), ENG tend not to win.

ENG have not helped themselves by their negative selections in this series. They have selected only four bowlers despite the fact that Hartley, Ahmed and Wood can all bat a bit, and Ben Stokes is not bowling yet. They seem to have pursued the proposition that they can wing their way to 20 wickets as a rule, and score whatever they have to using their high-risk methods. But when ENG win, its usually because their attack is either better than the opposition attack, or at least as good (in that, when the ENG attack is modest, so is the opposition attack). In my review of the 2nd Test, I wondered who was more spooked, IND by Bazball, or ENG by the pitches. IND seem to have overcome their worries about Bazball. But ENG have yet to work out how to get 20 wickets on these pitches.

With the fourth Test starting in only four days, it remains to be seen whether Jasprit Bumrah will play. Having bowled only 23 overs in Rajkot, Bumrah might yet be able to play. The IND batting has been adequate all series. Unless ENG change their bowling combination, this is likely to remain the case.