Chris Woakes is in excruciating pain. Gus Atkinson calls him for a debrief. England are a hit away from sealing the series. Even a tie will see them taking it 2-1. Shubman Gill wants to have a slip in place. Mohammed Siraj disagrees and sends Sai Sudharsan to fine third man. Every Indian fielder except Dhruv Jurel is manning the boundary. Atkinson expects a short ball and goes deep in his crease. Siraj plays a double bluff and bowls a yorker. In fact, it’s a full toss that doesn’t touch the ground and hits the base of off. The CricViz Analyst says it is hurled at 143 kph, Siraj’s fifth-quickest ball of the series, having bowled 185.2 overs before that. The fast bowler does a ‘Siuuuu’, a la his idol, Cristiano Ronaldo.
The series ends 2-2, the Indian team does a lap of honour and Jasprit Bumrah is not even with the squad. He was released after the first day’s play of the final Test at The Oval. A drawn series feels like a win for a young team that went through the busy fingers of regeneration in the lead-up to the England tour. But there’s a bigger picture… The last remnants of Indian cricket’s nauseating star culture – that had once forced Anil Kumble to step down as head coach because his captain wanted a change – is washed down the Thames. It’s a short walk from The Oval.
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Cricket meets football in Manchester. The Indian team turns up at Carrington before the fourth Test and Harry Maguire takes guard against Siraj. The former Manchester United captain goes inside-out over cover, never mind it’s a tennis ball. Maguire bursts out laughing. He gives Siraj a hug.
Liverpool is only about 30-odd miles down the M62 from Manchester. The people of the left-leaning city are still basking in their 20th. United finished 15th in the league last term and they have no European football this season. Still, it feels pretty apt, arguably the biggest football team in the world is hosting the biggest cricket side on the planet.
The Indian team is in transition, although head coach Gautam Gambhir doesn’t like the word. But somehow the mind races back to the mid-1980s, a certain Alex Ferguson from Govan checking in at Old Trafford, being welcomed by a toxic team culture. He rocks the boat, shipping out a generational talent like Norman Whiteside followed by Paul McGrath. Fans get angry and raise the ‘Ta Ra Fergie’ banner during a home game. The FA Cup fixture against Nottingham Forest arrives and Mark Robins saves Ferguson, who would go on and build an empire.
The Oval feels like the ‘Mark Robins’ moment for Gambhir, on the heels of back-to-back Test series defeats against New Zealand and Australia. The transition is now complete. Gill’s side has created an identity. Gambhir gives a ‘culture’ speech at the end of the fifth Test. “People will come and go, but the culture of the dressing room should always be like that people want to be part of this culture, that is what we want to create,” he says. The video is shared by the BCCI.
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Four-day Tests, anyone, after the most compelling series since the 2005 Ashes? Twenty-five days of blood, sweat and grit, and putting bodies on the line. Gill laughs at the suggestions of four-day Tests at the post-match presser. “In that case, all five Tests would have ended in draws,” he says on a lighter note before adding: “I think Test cricket should be as it is. In my opinion, it is the most rewarding and satisfying format.”
Test cricket, bloody hell.
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