India Struggling Under England Spinning Spell! Ranchi Test, Day2

England spinners, Shoaib Bashir and Tom Hartley, have made India struggle, once again after Hyderabad, and put the home team in a precarious position on the second day of the 4^th Test between India and England in Ranchi today. Bashir who replaced Rehan Ahmed is the chief damager, capturing four very important scalps that are Yashasvi Jaiswal (73), Shubman Gill (38), Rajat Patidar (17) and Ravindra Jadeja (12). This was followed up with gusto by the match-winner of the First Test, Tom Hartley who consumed one of the two debutant match-winners of the Third Test, Sarfaraz Khan and then dismissed R Ashwin whom the team dearly depended upon to hang on for the day and thus anchoring a partnership with Jurel, the second successful debutant of the Third Test. The two English spinners took absolute control of the proceedings after James Anderson removed captain Rohit Sharma cheaply and in just the third over of the India reply. Like in the previous outing a partnership was blooming between Jaiswal and Gill, but was cut short by Bashir getting Gill LBW at the team score of 86/2 (partnership restricted to 82 only). After that the Indian wickets started tumbling at regular intervals: 112/3 (Patidar), 130/4 (Jadeja), 161/5 (Jaiswal), 171/6 (Sarfaraz) and 177/7 (Ashwin). The inexperience of the team lay exposed this time.

Well, you can’t expect the youngsters to fire every time and take the team out of crisis or get it to a winning position every time. The captain, even though he did contribute a century in the previous test, must be determined to carry on and at least contribute a moderately good score; the same applies to the relatively more experienced Gill who failed to anchor the partnership in spite of Jaiswal going great guns at the other end; it’s okay to give another chance to Rajat Patidar who has been failing since the selectors were kind enough to include him in the playing eleven, but then the selectors should’ve first checked the availability of the relatively more experienced batsmen in the reserve—like for example, the axed Shreyas Iyer who doesn’t at all deserve a permanent deletion; and more disastrously, you can’t afford to drop your main strike bowler Jasprit Bumrah with the Series still undecided, particularly in the absence of the other strike pacer Mohd Shami.

If the would-be deficit is more than a 100 runs India would still face a huge challenge even if England manages to score only around 150 runs in their second innings; simply because as per the Hyderabad and other similar experiences on ‘home’ turfs where the ball turns, keeps low, induces vicious reverse swing and capitalizes on the pronounced uneven bounce, the home team invariably finds the pitch unplayable in the fourth innings. Now, the Indian spinners not at par with their counterparts of yore, it’s up to any good spinner of any visiting team to exploit the pitch for their teams better than the home spinners. Therefore, in a way, a Test match gets pre-determined by the toss—win it to win the match and vice versa. This also induces this writer to make an explosive statement: while nothing is wrong in making slow-turning pitches in here just like the way Australia or England or South Africa put up green turfs in their backyards, you cannot hope for your home team to win the toss every possible time; it makes you wonder if that was the case when they prepared the Ahmedabad pitch for the World Cup-2023 Final, hoping the home team to win the toss as they were consistent doing so during the tournament and then take the suitable call? If this speculation, howsoever ungrounded it may be, attract ire from some this writer would only welcome them to elucidate the issue further.

This writer agrees fully with England captain Ben Stokes on what he said after the last two consecutive defeats: he said the option of the ‘umpire’s call’ should be eliminated from the DRS rules. Rightly so, because the DRS has evolved to eliminate human mistakes and errors in judgement. Earlier there used to be ‘benefit of the doubt’ in LBW decisions expressed by the third umpires when the ball seemed to be just and only just touching the top or the sides of the off or the leg stumps and when it couldn’t be conclusively proved if the ball edged the bat or not. But now in such cases the DRS allows the ‘umpire’s call’, meaning if the umpire gave it Out originally then it has to be Out and vice versa, thus completely ignoring the ‘benefit of the doubt’ factor. If ‘err to human’ is true we cannot say the machines are bulletproof. Yes, like Ben said, ‘the umpire’s call’ should be taken out of the DRS and the entire decision should be left for the digital examination to decide, of course, if they could be convincing and conclusive. At the same time Ben Stokes was apparently benefiting today from the same clause he wanted removed!

A slight twist of good fortune for India at stumps today. Like the England seventh wicket partnership contributed more than 100 invaluable runs for the team with bowler Robinson notching up his highest Test score (58) in the company of Root from stumps yesterday to today morning session, the India seventh wicket partnership has so far contributed 42 runs as bowler Kuldeep Yadav is fighting it out with Jurel to end the day at 219/7, still trailing by 134 runs. The size of the lead to be conceded by India is very much going to decide the outcome of the match either in England’s or in India’s favor. However, should India crash to a defeat in the next two days, the behavior of this writer should not be labelled as ‘typical of an Indian supporter’, because during the next two or three days this writer happens to have some other engagement and may not be able to jot down the proceedings here, whoever wins or loses! Enjoy!