Unfiltered excitement to watch Shubman Gill bat, unequivocal anticipation to witness Jofra Archer’s return to bowl. The series level, no clear patterns or obvious favourites. The India-England Test at Lord’s isn’t a hard sell anyway but this one has characters, context and an unusual chaos to manage last-minute tickets.
India and England come to Lord’s for the third Test with a mixed taste in the mouth – having alternately experienced a bitter defeat and sweet success. It can be argued that India, after their 336 run-win in the second Test, have an edge. So did England after India’s Headingley heartbreak in the opening Test. But they couldn’t make it 2-0.
This is a series of new beginnings and teams moving on from the past. This is also a series that busts the momentum myth. As England might have realized, nosing ahead proved to be a momentary high. In this Wimbledon season, the home team’s 1-0 lead proved nothing more than ‘advantage’ that got negated by a quick ‘deuce’. The visitors came up with a resounding return winner pretty quickly.
India needs to be careful, it could very well be ‘deuce’ again. England can go for the lines or India are known to commit unforced errors.
England faces a similar dilemma that confronted India before the second Test. Which spinner do they play? After hyping the 21-year-old off-spinner Shoaib Basheer, there has been a sudden change of heart.
When Bashir foxed Rishabh Pant with a subtle change of pace and flight and got him caught at long-on, he was seen as a quick learner taking rapid strides towards greatness. He did take a few wickets but conceded lots of runs.
Now, they are asking that one question that all Test-specialist bowlers dread these days: Can he bat? No, he can’t. That means he awaits the same fate as Kuldeep Yadav, being on drinks duty. Washington Sundar’s wicket of Ben Stokes on the final day of the last Test has sealed the spot for him.
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Basheer’s possible replacement could be all-rounder Jacob Bethell. IPL enthusiasts would remember him as the efficient left-arm spinner who bowled in the powerplay and played smashing cameos as the floater top of the order.
This is a strange series, that at least from the scoreboard, looks like a run-making race but also provides those limited periods of play when the bowlers get the spotlight. And it is those short phases when wickets fall in clumps — after unending hours of dominating batting – that decide the game. Refer to those pulse-racing spells of Akash Deep and Mohammed Siraj.
If the questionable reading of pitches by experts is to be believed, Lord’s will be consistently kind to bowlers, unlike the unpredictable moodiness of Headingley and Edgbaston. From a distance, the pitch looks brownish green – the ambiguous colour code that comes with the promise of both runs and wickets.
Return of Bumrah
The return of Jasprit Bumrah, and the anticipation to watch him bowl with Siraj and Akash Deep, is one reason for the usual queue from St John’s Wood tube station to Lord’s getting longer. Like everything, this too comes with a dilemma. Who will bowl from which end?
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Lord’s cricket ground. (FILE photo)
It is said, first timers at Lord’s take time to adjust to the slope that cuts the ground horizontally. In case one walks from point to fine-leg, with the bowler bowling from pavilion end, it’s all downhill with the storied surface of the hallowed ground sinking on one side. This is what makes the in-coming ball to the right-hander sliding in much more.
Bumrah is a master of ball-control, he can adjust, manage to take full advantage of the slope, making his in-coming ball deadlier. Akash Deep and Siraj too do their nip-backers spectacularly. As the second and third bowlers of the Indian pace attack, they too wouldn’t mind this extra fillip. Or will it be suitable for them to take the anti-slope end and bowl under conditions they are used to?
England are at their Home of Cricket and they have with them Chris Woakes, a pacer that historically does well at Lord’s. He has 32 wickets from 7 Tests and he also scored 137 against India during the 2018 series. With the focus on Archer and his return, India could be surprised by Gus Atkinson, who has been included in the Test keeping in mind the workload on their pacers, who have been tired of bowling to Shubman, who scored a record 430 runs in the Test.
The overnight success of Akash Deep has raised the pace bowler’s stock in England. Media reports are extolling the team to go with a Woakes, Archer and Atkinson trio and blow away India at Lord’s.
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It wouldn’t be easy since the Indian batting line-up are in the form of their lives. Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Shubman, Pant have had near hundreds, hundreds, daddy hundreds, double hundreds and two hundreds in each innings. But then Lord’s is uniquely different. Forecast says Thursday, unlike the mostly sunny series, can be a new chilly day.
India needs to be prepared. They need to remind themselves that winning momentum is a myth. Recall the start of the opening BGT Test at Perth. It was the game the then captain Rohit Sharma had missed and the team was led by Bumrah. Bumrah took 5 wickets, there were 100s from Jaiswal and Virat Kohli and India won the Test. The momentum was India’s but they went tumbling down after that as the ball rolls on the Lord’s slope.
