Category: India Cricket

Series victory would offer chance to experiment in fifth Test but Stokes and McCullum are trying to be here now at Old Trafford

The last time India were in Manchester for a Test match was back in 2021 and it was a pretty bleak affair. An outbreak of Covid-19 among their backroom staff saw the series finale called off just 90 minutes before the toss, even if many suspected the proximity of the rescheduled Indian Premier League also had a role to play here.

“I saw Lanky the Giraffe walking into the ground with his head slumped,” said Tom Harrison, then chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, after crossing paths with Lancashire’s club mascot that morning. “It summed up my feelings too.”

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• India captain doesn’t back down over Lord’s spat

• Ben Stokes says England did not ‘go over the line’

The India captain, Shubman Gill, has strongly criticised some of England’s behaviour during their current Test series, describing it as not “what I would think comes in the spirit of the game”.

On the eve of the fourth Test at Old Trafford Gill was asked if he regretted confronting the England batter Zak Crawley during the last match at Lord’s, a moment that prompted England to decide, as Harry Brook put it on Monday, “to give them something back and not be the nice guys we have been in the last three or four years”.

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A walking wicket on the 2018 tour of England, stats suggest Rahul’s average of 35 is more impressive than it seems

The Guardian’s over-by-over coverage is built on reader interaction. We probably receive more than 1,000 emails during an average Test, hundreds of which are published. As an epic Lord’s Test unfolded, the same question kept dropping into our inboxes. “This is the second innings of the series that has left me baffled as to how KL Rahul averages only 35 in Tests,” began one such email from Ned Blackburn. “He seems to have the temperament, technique and discipline to be absolutely elite. What am I missing?”

Rahul’s Test average has become the unsolved mystery of the English summer. But after a day in the statistical dirt – and Ben Stokes thought he went to some dark places on Monday – we can offer some potential explanations. The simplest reason is that after a fine start to his career he became a superstar of Indian cricket, a status that is Kryptonite for an overthinker. “I just couldn’t get out of my own head,” he said in late 2023. “I couldn’t leave cricket or my professional life on the field. It was such a heaviness on me.”

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Fast bowler displayed all the attributes which set him apart from others to deliver optimism for rest of series and Ashes tour

The electric return of Jofra Archer in England’s tight victory against India at Lord’s set straight a couple of narratives that arose during his four-year absence from Test cricket. It is often said that a player’s stock can rise when they are sat on the sidelines – yet sometimes, in some quarters, the reverse can also be true.

Chief among them was a reminder that England possess a special fast bowling talent here, Archer displaying the attributes that set him apart from others. As the man himself confidently put it regarding the 89.6mph beauty to Rishabh Pant that angled in, nipped away and gave the snappers the stumplosion they craved: “I guess it was just a matter of when, if I kept bowling like that. I can’t imagine many left-handers getting away with it.”

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• Hampshire bowler last played Test cricket in 2017

• Rest of the squad unchanged for Old Trafford clash

Liam Dawson has been added to England’s squad for the fourth Test against India, ending an eight-year exile from the longest format in international cricket.

Last month the Hampshire all-rounder made a successful return to England’s T20 side after a three-year absence and, with Shoaib Bashir forced to pull out of the India series with a broken finger, he has finally been rewarded for his excellent red-ball form in recent seasons: 49 first-class wickets in 2023 followed by 54 in 2024, by a considerable margin his two most successful campaigns.

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• Archer only change for third Test as Tongue drops out

• Fellow pace bowler Wood targeting final Test at The Oval

Jofra Archer will start his first Test match in more than four years after being named as the only change in the England team to face India in the third Test at Lord’s on Thursday.

Chris Woakes and Brydon Carse are both retained after the defeat to India at Edgbaston which squared the series 1-1, with Josh Tongue making way for Archer.

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The fast bowler may be underdone but the national side can’t afford to ignore him – the question is who makes way

Tradition usually dictates that after a batting lineup fails in the manner that England’s largely did on a flat one at Edgbaston – four ducks among the top six, just two men passing 50, 157.4 overs batted to India’s 234 – a bowler or two must pay the price.

Given the short turnaround, and with admittedly some merit after shipping over 1,000 runs in a home Test for just the second time in history, this will come to pass at Lord’s on Thursday. All signs point to Jofra Archer’s return. A risk? Undoubtedly. After four years of injury struggles and a slow burn of a comeback in the white-ball formats, a mere 18 overs of priming in county cricket feels instinctively skinny.

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• Brendon McCullum calls for pitch with pace and bounce

• Injury-plagued bowler last played for Test team in 2021

Jofra Archer is poised to make his long-awaited comeback in the third Test against India this week, with Brendon McCullum, the England head coach, calling for Lord’s to deliver a pitch that has pace, bounce and sideways movement.

Archer, 30, joined the England squad at Edgbaston last week but was held back from what became a crushing 336-run defeat by Shubman Gill’s tourists. And now at one-all in the series, England’s seam attack seems likely to be refreshed amid a strong hint from McCullum that this means Archer’s return.

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• Premier bowler Bumrah could be rested at Edgbaston

• Captain Gill says decision will be made on Tuesday night

India chose to let speculation swirl around the potential involvement of Jasprit Bumrah in Wednesday’s second Test, insisting that a decision over whether to play their premier bowler would not be taken until late on Tuesday night.

Their fear is that should Edgbaston produce a pitch which favours batting, a prospect made more likely by the dry conditions in which the ground staff have been working, and the rain that is tentatively forecast for the weekend were to fall, a draw would become the most likely result. Playing the 31-year-old might end up doing little more than draining his reserves of energy ahead of a third Test that starts at Lord’s next Thursday. Shubman Gill, the India captain, would say only that Bumrah is “definitely available”.

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• Bowler last in Test setup in February 2021

• Archer played first red-ball match in four years this week

England have fast-tracked Jofra Archer into their squad to face India in the second Test at Edgbaston next week despite the misgivings of the bowler’s coach at Sussex.

The 30-year-old fast bowler returns to the Test setup for the first time since March 2021 after successfully coming through his first red-ball match for 1,501 days in Sussex’s match at Durham this week.

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Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes’s side have developed clarity in the final innings and never seem to give up

Sports writers love a Churchillian speech that precedes a mind-bending feat. Take three years ago, when word got back that Brendon McCullum had told his England players to “run towards the danger” at Trent Bridge before Jonny Bairstow vaporised a target of 299 against New Zealand. It was like ruddy catnip for the press corps.

This time, after reeling in 371 at Headingley on Tuesday at a breezy 4.5 runs per over and with 14 overs to spare? Apparently very little was said in the dressing room beforehand beyond “bat the day, win the game” or Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett deciding between them to ignore the target and just “play like it was day one”.

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• First Test, D4: India 471 & 364; England 465 & 21-0

• Tongue takes three wickets in four balls

Another India lower-order collapse gave England a fighting chance of a thrilling victory in the first Test at Headingley, with the hosts 21-0 in their second innings at the close of play on day four, chasing 371 to win.

Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul struck centuries for the visitors, with the former becoming the second wicketkeeper to hit twin tons in a Test match. But just as he did in the first innings, Josh Tongue came to the fore when seeing off the Indian tail, with three wickets in four balls helping ensure the tourists lost their final six second-innings wickets for 31 runs.

Ali Martin’s report will follow shortly.

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After a run of greats at the helm, the tourists’ early promotion of their new leader is an intriguing choice to steady a listing ship

Shubman Gill was a pretty laid-back character when he played for Glamorgan three summers ago. So laid back, in fact, that early on during his time there he parked the brand new Volvo the club had arranged for him and apparently left the keys in the ignition. Sure enough, after training, he returned to find it had been pinched.

Cue panic in the finance department at Sophia Gardens, calls to the insurers and the like. But at least his new teammates had material for some lighthearted mickey-taking. Gill, just turned 23 but already an India star on the rise, had arrived for three September rounds of the County Championship in 2022. Saying hello with 92 on debut in Cardiff, and goodbye with 119 at Hove, it sounds like he fitted in well.

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• Vice-captain gets the nod after 171 against Zimbabwe

• The 21-year-old rising star featured against West Indies

Ollie Pope has retained his England place and will face India in the first Test starting on Friday, the 171 he scored against Zimbabwe last month having proved enough to hold off the emerging challenge of Jacob Bethell.

Bethell’s success in Pope’s No 3 slot during the three-match series in New Zealand over the winter, when he scored a half-century in each Test and averaged 52, appeared to have made the position his to lose.

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If the Pataudi Trophy had to be renamed then the rivalry between India and England’s two most-capped Test cricketers was worthy of the switch

Spring 2006 and India are batting against England at the Wankhede in Mumbai. The series is all square, one Test each with one to play. England, batting first, have made an even 400, thanks in large part to a century by Andrew Strauss and 88 from his Middlesex teammate Owais Shah, who is making his debut.

It is just past tea on the second day and India’s openers are already gone, bounced out by Matthew Hoggard. Sachin Tendulkar is at No 4 and England’s captain, Andrew Flintoff, has just thrown the ball to his first-change bowler, Jimmy Anderson.

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