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Hindsight is both a blessing and a curse. With the vantage point of a spectator, it is perhaps easier to shrug off the tactics implemented by Joe Root on what turned out to be a disastrous Monday for the England team. But the things he believed in, he did so for a reason. However, as wise people say, one must always know when to pull the plug, and that’s where fingers were pointed at the English skipper.
So where did Joe Root go wrong?
A little time ago in Southampton
Not a lot has been spoken about Mohammed Shami, the batsman, because there isn’t much. However, an international cricket team bowling at him can never give that excuse no matter what skill he has or lacks.
If you go back a couple of months to the World Test Championship (WTC) final, you would understand that Joe Root took a leaf out of New Zealand skipper Kane Williamson’s thought process to dismiss Shami. But he ended up overdoing it.
Shami can swing his bat to good effect and get runs, without much of an esthetic outlook. Williamson noticed that the Indian fast bowler was getting on top of the short deliveries and pulling/cutting fiercely. As a result, he decided to launch a smart attack.
He brought back Tim Southee, made him bowl full outside off, luring Shami to chase the deliveries. A fielder was present at third man, perhaps 55-60 yards away from the batsman and not entirely on the boundary, in anticipation of a wild-swing snatching the top edge. The enticing part about the plan to really do the job was not having a fielder at long-on.
Shami fell into the trap as he went for a big heave and top-edged it straight to the intelligently-placed third-man fielder.
Back to Lord’s
Mark Wood, just like the rest of his England teammates, looked pumped in the early moments of Day 5, and it was evident from the speeds he was clocking. Ollie Robinson had just removed the big fish, Rishabh Pant, very early and Ishant Sharma too was trapped in front of the stumps soon after. England had their feet on the Indian necks.
Usually when the Indian team are leading by 182 runs with two wickets remaining, fans, even the highly optimistic ones, don’t expect more than 10 runs to be added to the scorecard. It’s symptomatic to the Indian tail’s horrible record since the start of the inaugural Test Championship cycle.
Ajinkya Rahane, however, did mention in a press conference before the first Test that India’s frontline bowlers are spending some time in the nets with their willows, in a bid to up their current standards.
Whatever happened in those training sessions proved to be gold dust on a day of days for the Indian side.
With Root placing five fielders in the deep for Shami to start with, the intention was clear. Some of the Indian fans who understood what could transpire had their heads down. However, Shami controlled the perkiness that usually prompts those wild hawks.
For a good 30 minutes, both Jasprit Bumrah and Shami did nothing extravagant, the odd boundaries coming via a top edge flying above the slip cordon and a terrific cut from Bumrah. They neatly tucked the short ones into gaps, left those that needed to be, and managed to get bat on ball to full-length deliveries without sweating.
Bumrah averaged 2.26 before the second Test started and since 2018, Shami's stay at the crease averaged just eight balls per innings. Put that into context to understand why Indian fans were in seventh heaven during their unbeaten 89-run partnership.
Joe Root was visibly distressed and agitated, but he did very little to make things better. He continued with the field set, still waiting for the batters to make a mistake.
While he kept waiting and the English fast bowlers peppered them with short ones, Moeen Ali also couldn’t do much. Both batsmen countered the spinner with full-blown forward and backward defenses, right off the text books from ninth grade.
Having acquired so much confidence already, Shami wasn’t going to resist the off-breaks enticing to be hit over long-on and mid-wicket. He brought up his half-century with a 92-meter six off Ali, leaving the English skipper bemused at the unusuality of the events.
Both of them mustered 47 runs in ones and twos in a 89-run partnership, with only 42 coming in boundaries. Root continued to have no fielder in catching areas around the bat. When he tried to do so with Ali on the ball, both the Indian tailenders were well settled.
A foot on the neck is perhaps not enough in the modern day, if you don’t have your eyes on the person underneath. While you celebrate looking skywards, the onus slips away as smooth as a glider.
A testament to the mind games won and levels escalated, the Indian tail has a different look to it now. For the second game running, there’s palpable fortitude and intelligence shown by them and the Indian fans can only hope for it to continue.
Not that the side will be in desperate need of them to score runs profusely on a daily basis, but for them to consistently play out overs and chip in with those 30-40 pivotal runs can polish Indian fortunes even brighter.
The battle of egos
Jasprit Bumrah managed to enrage Jimmy Anderson during England’s first innings, when he gave the Lancashire man a taste of the infamous Jardine strategy. Those short deliveries were brilliantly directed at his head, and a good five to six times Anderson ducked waywardly to save himself, failing to do so on a couple of occasions.
When Shami managed to dismiss Anderson later on, the Englishman looked unimpressed with Bumrah’s strategy and some words were exchanged with temperatures soaring up slightly.
Mark Wood seemed to have the edge over Shami and Bumrah when they were yet to settle in on Day 5. His cherries flew past the batsmen light years before they could move their bat, he was clocking the 150 kmph-mark regularly and the Indian duo were clearly one on-the-stumps-full-delivery away from surrendering.
To add to that, Wood and Bumrah constantly kept going at each other with the on-field officials needing to intervene.
But it seemed as if Root wanted Anderson (and the others, perhaps) to have a slice of vengeance, if not the entire pie. The short deliveries came more frequently than usual, and when the Indians were giving nothing away, the bowling unit started rethinking.
Plenty can be said about certain phases on the fifth day of the Lord’s Test. This Indian side, which feeds off the adrenaline to punch above their already high standards, is capable of doing the unthinkable.
There’s enough evidence to back that hypothesis, wins at the Gabba and the Lord’s being classic holding the fort strongly. Indians have registered some magical performances at Lord’s before, and there’s no denying the current one won’t be the last. However, this one will remain a tad more special than the others.
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