Category: India Cricket

Yashasvi Jaiswal, Jasprit Bumrah and Dhruv Jurel starred for the hosts against an England team that lacked consistency

By Gary Naylor for the 99.94 Cricket Blog

Ben Stokes: 199 runs at 20; one wicket at 17; four catches
Uncharacteristically, he could not find a way to influence even one match with bat or ball in hand, but it was his captaincy, more than any other factor, that had England trading blows for two Tests and two days in India – and not many teams have done that in recent years. His handling of his young spinners was exemplary (his old spinner not so much) and his roiling imagination in the field stubbornly refused to allow games to drift. Then India’s experience and class began to tell and four collapses in five innings saw an old story play out again. Grade B-

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England captain took a wicket with his first ball since July although India continue to dominate fifth Test

In a match stuffed with milestones, we waited, but not, as it turns out, for Jimmy. Not for a 700th Test wicket, but a 198th. And not from a freakish bottle-blond 41-year-old, but a freakish ginger 32-year-old, back, at last, with the ball in his hand.

On another tricky day for England, as a 3-1 series defeat drifted out of sight and 4-1 slotted into the sightlines, and just as India’s first innings looked about to launch into the stratosphere, Ben Stokes suddenly picked up the ball in time for the second over after lunch.

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Serene viewing for aimchair England fans became a whirl of wickets as five fell in six overs and three reviews were burnt

I’m sure England feel like they’ve had it tough out in the middle in Dharamshala against India’s irrepressible spin trio, but they’re not the ones getting up at 3.45am on a still-cold-if-creeping into-spring UK morning.

It’s one thing watching Kuldeep Yadav and his magical variations from the boundary while looking hot in stubble and shades and regulation light grey Bazball puffer jacket, with the prettily-iced foothills of the Himalayas in the background, surrounded by the Edinburgh rock colours of a picture-book Toytown stadium. It’s quite another doing it from the living room, in a dressing gown and ironed-in wrinkles, trying to stop your shoulders leaching into your ears.

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After a struggle to replace the injured Rishabh Pant, Jurel has given selectors a dilemma with fine displays in his two Tests

Of all the many cherries India can take from pocketing the Test series against England at Ranchi – Ravichandran Ashwin’s magical performance with the new ball, more important runs for young guns Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill – perhaps the biggest and rosiest was the performance of new wicketkeeper Dhruv Jurel.

Ever since the irrepressible Rishabh Pant was badly injured in a car accident in December 2022, India have been searching for a ready-made replacement without success. They tried Ishan Kishan for a couple of Tests against West Indies. They experimented with KL Rahul, who played a couple of Tests against South Africa without doing much wrong until coach Rahul Dravid decided that it was a task too big for him to keep wicket against Bazball on Indian pitches. That left KS Bharat, who played in all five Tests against Australia at the beginning of 2023 with the gloves, until he too was discarded after the second Test at Visakhapatnam.

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