England Pass 'Test' Of Character, Put Bazball Into Action In India

India didn’t on the last two days of the fascinating first Test against England in Hyderabad as they crashed to a shock 28-run defeat. England on the other hand, showed plenty of it after the first two days ran depressingly close to doomsday predictions when they were bowled out for 245 in the first innings, crossing 200 only because of a fighting 70 from skipper Ben Stokes who was the last man out. But for the contributions from the lower order, England would have fallen for less than 200 in a Test innings in India yet again, as they had, time after time in India’s last home series, which they lost, 1-3, by big margins.

And when India rattled up to 436 in their first innings with three fine 80s in their scorecard, England were well on their way out of the game. Even more so when they were down and out at 163 for 5 in their second innings, still 35 runs away from making India bat again, and with the top order back in the Pavillion. The match looked set for a three-day finish and the spectre of a long, boring ‘winter’ of familiar England batting collapses over a lengthy series loomed ahead.

But one man in the England side - a man who had a miserable tour of India previously and looked like continuing that this time too with a first-innings failure - had other ideas, as he stood there resolutely, refusing to give up. Showing the mental toughness and character that Test Cricket calls for, so often from its players, he put his insecurities against spin behind him and repeatedly swept, reverse swept, scooped and played all manner of unorthodox shots in a brilliant display of class, and perhaps even more so, self-belief.

He launched a brilliant counterattack on the Indian bowlers as if it were his responsibility to prove that ‘Bazball’ was alive and well, even on slow, low, turning Indian pitches, and proved emphatically that launching a calculated attack was perhaps the best way to play in these conditions. And for the first time in almost a decade, the Indian spinners seemed to be out of ideas at home; the heads dropped as he tore into them with his innovative strokeplay.

It was an extraordinary display, one of the best knocks ever by a visiting batter in India, one that will be talked about for years to come. Bazball needed Ollie Pope to show that it worked even in India against marauding Indian spinners, and Ollie Pope needed the Bazball style of play to come out of his nightmare. Pope constantly kept sounding the boundary boards with one outrageous shot after another and played with complete confidence and mastery. Before the series, he had talked of a ‘different mindset in the team this time around’ and ‘being ready for turn from day one’, and he walked that talk and more in this Test Match.

Even when supposedly under pressure, Pope kept the scoreboard not just ticking over but rattling along with his positive intent, and built crucial partnerships one after the other with the lower order. He cruised untroubled for the most part in a memorable innings, falling just four short of a well-deserved double hundred. In the process, he resurrected a sagging Test career, and proved to everyone, most of all to himself, that he could succeed against quality spinners on turning tracks.

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So much of this was sadly missing in the Indian run chase later.

While the new Vice Captain ‘swept’ England to a position of strength, giving them a sizeable target to bowl at, what Pope did above all was to bring back belief into this England side. And it showed immediately in the second innings as they reduced the dominant Indian batting lineup to 119 for seven, with the target of 231 seeming impossibly far away. We have seen the effect of an innings such as this on a team many times in the past. Kapil Dev’s 175 against Zimbabwe in 1983 and Glenn Maxwell’s 200 against Afghanistan two months ago are just two such instances, still fresh in the memory for the way they galvanised their respective sides and won them a World Cup each.

Such is the power of belief, and once that is infused in a side, it can beat the best team in the world.

This is exactly what England did on the day, as debutant left-arm spinner Tom Hartley, who looked every bit a journeyman in the first innings when the Indian batters took him to the cleaners, bowled a dream spell in the second, picking up seven for 62. Like Pope’s innings, it was probably one of the greatest spells ever bowled by a visiting spinner in India.

Half a world away at the Gabba in Australia, it was another unknown debutant, Shamar Joseph, eking out a living as a security guard not so long ago, who brushed aside a strong Australian batting lineup, picking up seven wickets in an equally heartwarming spell, and won a Test Match for his side Down Under for the first time in 27 years.

What a Cinderella story that has been!

A side that once dominated world cricket in the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, and produced generations after generations of all-time greats, picked itself up from the floor in a massive turnaround, just as questions were being raised about whether it should be allowed to retain its Test-playing status. Like Bazball and what it has done for Test Cricket, the West Indies victory is a wonderful harbinger of hope in the new year, the hope of a resurgent West Indies after years of terminal decline and what that can potentially do for Test Cricket.

Closer to home, the series in India is wide open and stands exactly where it did at the end of the first Test at Chennai on England’s last tour of India some years ago. India will hope that they can replicate the scorelines and results of the subsequent three Test matches of that tour, but England, this time under the inspirational leadership of Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum, are a different outfit altogether.

An outfit that backs its players to attack and dominate, and if in the process they lose wickets, so be it. Their players are secure in the knowledge that they can play their shots and improvise and entertain to the best of their abilities and heads will not necessarily be on the chopping block if things go wrong.

It is that fearlessness that has brought rich dividends for them in red-ball cricket against the best sides of the world.

India in India is the final frontier, where this theory is to be put under severe test. But, with the ‘high’ that they have achieved in the First Test, England have started with a bang down that road. And India, for the first time since 2013, have a real fight on their hands, at home. If the series seesaws the way the first Test did, it will be a shot in the arm for Test Cricket.

India are too good a side and much too talented not to come roaring back into the contest, like a wounded tiger, but they will need to show more character and intent than they did in the second innings at Hyderabad.

Jaspreet Bumrah’s four-wicket haul proved once again that true class will always tell, irrespective of the surfaces produced and, who knows, with Mohammad Shami due to return to the side and Siraj due for another of his great performances, it is not necessary that it will only be the spinners attacking the England batters in the matches to come.

It can only get better from here on.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author. The author is a veteran Wing Commander of the Indian Air Force, who has played Ranji Trophy for Services.