LONDON: If I had closed my eyes during play, it would have been easy to imagine that I was at a stadium in India. Chants of “India-ar” reverberated, phone calls in Hindi all around. As it was, I was in the Grand Stand at Lord’s, sitting next to British Indians, who, apart from supporting India, told me that they supported West Ham and Arsenal. We were there to witness the final day’s play of this summer’s third Test match between England and India, one balanced on a knife edge. It was a Monday. In anticipation of a close and exciting finish, tickets had been purchased at short notice for £25 ($33.50), a sixth of the price for previous days.
At the start of play, India’s score was 58 for four, another 135 runs required to reach a target of 193. Their cause had been damaged late on the fourth day with the loss of three wickets. The two teams had scored the same number of runs – 387 — in their first innings, only the ninth time this has occurred in 2,594 Tests.
England had eked out 192 in its second innings, a score which looked below par, until those late wickets on day four. Ninety overs were to be bowled on the fifth day. A draw was a highly unlikely outcome, but what about a tie, with all scores equal, achieved only twice in Test cricket?
The Indian supporters were nervous and not optimistic. They clapped every run, every successful defensive shot. Their hopes suffered two massive blows with the loss of two key batters. The flamboyant Rishabh Pant had his stumps splayed by England’s fastest bowler, Jofra Archer. Three overs later, KL Rahul, the dependable, solid opener, fell to Ben Stokes on review, the score 81 for six. This became 82 for seven when Archer produced a brilliant catch from his own bowling. India’s supporters despaired. Luck was against them. Those next to me alleged that England had cheated on the evening of the third day, when their openers engaged in deliberate time-wasting.
Their feelings of injustice increased immediately when India’s Ravi Jadeja and England’s bowler, Brydon Carse, collided in mid-wicket as the former was executing a run. Jadeja represented India’s last hope. He is one of international cricket’s finest all-rounders. A left-handed spinner and left-handed batter, in 83 Tests he has taken 326 wickets at an average of 24.93, while scoring 3,697 runs at an average of 36.97. At Lord’s, he adeptly marshalled the strike around the lower-end batters for 50 overs in enthralling passages of play.
First, Nitesh Kumar Reddy supported him resolutely for 15 overs in a stand of 30 runs, only to be dismissed on the stroke of lunch, much to India’s chagrin. The supporters felt that he had been the subject of unwarranted verbal attacks from England’s fielders that disturbed his concentration. After lunch, it was Jasprit Bumrah’s turn to support Jadeja in a stand of 35 runs, of which Bumrah contributed five in 31 overs.
By this time, I had switched my vantage point to the opposite side of the ground in the Tavern Stand, closer to the field of play. Here, more impassioned Indians fell silent when Bumrah attempted a much-too-ambitious shot, leaving India on 147 for nine, still 46 runs away from victory. Enter Mohammed Siraj, whose overzealous celebration after dismissing one of England’s batters had brought him a fine. He also displayed determined resistance and, at teatime, India had reached 163 for 9 in 70.0 overs. In normal circumstances, a scoring rate of 2.3 runs per over would be heavily criticized. These were no ordinary circumstances. The Indian supporters had been given renewed hope of a stunning victory. It was the turn of England’s supporter to bear a worried frown.
In India’s first innings, a hand injury to England’s spinner, Shoaib Bashir, forced England to rely on an all-seam attack. After four years of recovery from injury, Archer’s return to international cricket was being strictly controlled. His captain, Ben Stokes, did not want to run the risk of over-bowling Archer. In this situation, Stokes took it on himself to bowl two Herculean spells of 9.2 overs and ten overs in the afternoon from the Nursery end.
At the beginning of each over, Indian supporters marvelled that he was still bowling. This is a player who suffered a groin injury on the first day and seems to be permanently battling injury to a body under strain. There can be no doubting his mental fortitude and sense of place. It was the same date six years ago when he was centerpiece in England’s ODI World cup victory at Lord’s, as was Archer. After tea, it was Archer who bowled from the Nursery end, striking Siraj a painful bowl on the body. At the Pavilion end it was Bashir, a last throw of the dice, a gamble — why leave it until now? Siraj defended solidly, the ball spun back after hitting the ground, deviated toward the stumps, one of which was hit sufficiently to dislodge a bail.
Delirium broke out among the English fielders, Siraj was left motionless and distraught. Jadeja stood looking upwards, his arm over his helmet in disbelief, his heroic efforts doomed by a freak twist. Yet another Test match has proved that the format’s ability to produce theater of the highest dramatical content still remains and should not only be cherished but actively supported. On this occasion, the theatrics had been accentuated by the dominant proportion of excited Indians in the crowd, by the tensions between actors in each team and by judgments and decisions made on instinctive feelings by England’s captain.
Once the dust has settled on this extraordinary Test match, it should not be allowed to gloss over some imperfections with the format. Ninety overs are supposed to be bowled per day but this rarely happens. All manner of factors eat into achieving this. Some are acceptable, such as the Decision Review System, although that could be speeded up. What is galling for spectators is the increase in impromptu drinks breaks and lengthy on-field treatment of injuries, not to mention blatant examples of time-wasting.
A particular bugbear is an increasing propensity for players to request a change of ball because they deem it to be out of shape. Cricket’s Law 4 states that if “the umpires agree that it has become unfit for play through normal use, the umpires shall replace it with a ball which has had wear comparable with that which the previous ball had received before the need for its replacement.” The process of identifying a replacement takes too long. Umpires carry a ball gauge to check whether the size of the ball meets the standard measurements. It is time that their responsibility was reinforced. They could check the ball at the end of each over and players should not be allowed to question its condition.
The egregious and blatant time-wasting in the Lord’s Test risks marring its overall image. The England players have been fined 10 percent of their match fee and penalized two ICC World Test Championship points for maintaining a slow over-rate. Such penalties seem not to deter. It is time for cricket’s authorities to empower umpires to clamp down on players and further enhance the quality of cricket’s most treasured format.
