All Square at the Oval

MERE SAATH HI kyun, upar waala/ Why always with me, God?” This is what Moham­med Siraj, India’s most lovable modern-day cricketer, who wears his heart on his sleeve and a perma-smile on his lips, admitted to thinking on the night before the final day of the Oval Test.

Anyway used to waking up by 8AM on regular match days, Siraj couldn’t sleep beyond 6 on the morning of the 25th and ultimate day of India’s already-epic tour of England, one that now hinged on the pros­pect of the most thrilling finish to a Test series in a long while. England required just 35 runs to win the series 3-1, even as India needed four wickets to square it 2-2, one of those wickets being that of Chris Woakes, his dislocated shoulder slung in a cast.

In the absence of Jasprit Bumrah, having only appeared intermittently this series, Siraj had tirelessly led India’s bowling attack: tireless to the extent that he was the only fast bowler to play all five Test matches without getting injured, from either side, already having bowled more than 180 overs by this point, or a lit­tle over 1,000 balls over the brutal English summer and rains. That the upcoming result depended on the “Miyaan” from Hyderabad was well known to him, his team and the fans, but Siraj’s early-morn­ing anxiety was also due to the fact that twice he had held himself responsible for not closing it out when he had the chance.

The first occasion was with the bat during the dregs of the thriller at Lord’s, him being the last wicket to fall with In­dia needing just 23 runs to win and take a 2-1 lead. They ended up conceding the same lead to England instead. The other was on the second last day of the series at the Oval, when he dropped Harry Brook early in his innings—the target of 374 then looming very far away. Brook went on to get a hundred, as did the ever-consis­tent Joe Root, and their stand of 195 runs took England to 301 for three, just 73 runs away from sealing the match and series with seven wickets in hand. But then, in a series of wildly oscillating fortunes, it shifted some more, and in a matter of minutes, Brook fell for 111 (caught by Siraj), as did Jacob Bethell and Root (for 105), followed by rain, which pushed the game into the final day of the series. That last morning, then, soon after wak­ing up earlier than the rest, Siraj would turn to Google for motivation; for belief. He downloaded a picture of Cristiano Ronaldo, whose celebration he anyway mimics on taking a wicket, the footballer pointing at the word “BELIEVE”, printed over the horizon. He made it his phone’s wallpaper for the day.

The rest was all of 56 minutes of breathtaking cricketing history, largely driven by Siraj’s lion-hearted pursuit to make it happen. With the overcast skies of London starting to sprinkle rain, he nicked off the dangerous Jamie Smith in his first over of the day and trapped Jamie Overton (who had resumed proceedings on Day 5 with an aggressive bound­ary) in his second. And with only six runs to win for England, he detonated Gus Atkinson’s off stump with a perfect yorker to claim his third wicket of the morning, fifth of the innings, ninth of the match and 23rd of the series to quite liter­ally hand India their narrowest margin of victory in their long Test history. Wrapped inside a huddle of celebrating bodies and overcome with emotion that would take long to subside, Siraj would later say this in the press conference: “Upar waale ne bhi kuch achcha likha tha mere liye/ God had also written something good for me.”

TO TRULY GRASP the enor­mity of India’s series-levelling effort at the fifth and final Test of a gruelling five-match tour of Eng­land—fast being hailed by the global cricket community as the greatest red-ball series in a couple of decades—all one has to do is to travel back to the final week of July, for the penultimate and pivotal Test of the series in Manchester, when Shubman Gill’s young Indian side tee­tered on the verge of yet another Test series defeat. The magnitude of what they ended up pulling off at the Oval by drawing the series 2-2 is, of course, amplified further back in time, back to India’s crippling Test series losses to New Zealand at home and Australia away in back-to-back assignments at the turn of the year, or even by May when Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma joined Ravichandran Ashwin in Test retirement, the three of them leaving behind a seemingly unfill­able void. But for now, Manchester in late July will do well to lend context.

Precisely by lunch on Day Four of the game at Old Trafford, India’s tired bowlers had conceded the highest innings score of the series—669 runs, a total that gave England a mighty first innings lead of 311 runs. What would’ve made India’s food-break wholly unappetising was their second in­nings reply thus far—0 runs for 2 wickets, with opener Yashasvi Jaiswal and No 3 Sai Sudharsan both out for ducks. Staring at a massive deficit with a fallen top-order to boot, India needed to bat out five whole sessions to avoid certain defeat—in the match and series. But how could one ex­pect a team that had lost nine out of their last 11 Tests to bat out 10 consecutive hours, spread over two days, with only eight wickets in hand? With this ques­tion looming thick in Manchester, Gill, captaining his country in his very first se­ries, somehow found the answer—with bat and mind.

His knock of 103, Gill’s fourth hun­dred of an era-defining tour for both Indian cricket and himself, gave India hope, before all-round­ers Washington Sundar and Ravindra Jadeja turned that hope into something real with hun­dreds of their own (101 and 107, respectively, both unbeaten). So exhausted were the hosts with this unexpected defiance that England captain Ben Stokes offered a handshake (and a draw) well before the end of the last session, and well be­fore the spin duo had reached their batting landmarks. But Sundar and Jadeja ignored Stokes’ petulance and chose to walk off the field with the draw only after becoming centurions, sending a strong message that this new-look Indian side wouldn’t be pushed over by England’s misplaced entitlement. And thus, trail­ing 1-2, they returned to London for the final showdown just as they had left it after their loss at Lord’s. With a series to level and all to play for.

Given Siraj’s heroic Player of the Match performance in the final Test, it is rather easy to forget that India’s second win in the series was due to a collective performance, just as their comebacks had been all along on this tour (be it in Birmingham, Manchester or this second visit to London). For starters, at the Oval, Siraj was given ample support by India’s first-change bowler, Prasidh Krishna, who stepped it up when it mattered most with eight match-wickets (Krishna and Siraj accounted for 17 out of the 20 England wickets to fall). The other Karnataka player, Karun Nair, too, registered his most memorable performance of the tour in the final game, a maiden half-century (57) that helped India post a decent first-innings total in the first place.

Nair, though, will be one of the very few players to return from England with­out having sealed his immediate future in Test cricket. His middling returns of 205 runs (at an average of 25.62) now seem pale in a series where five Indians crossed the 400-run mark—Gill (754), KL Rahul (532), Ravindra Jadeja (516), Rishabh Pant (479) and Yashasvi Jaiswal (411)—and they were of course India’s greatest positives going ahead, especially the performances slapped together by In­dia’s spin-allrounders, Jadeja and Sundar. In the wake of Kohli, Ashwin and Rohit’s retirements, Jadeja, 36, suddenly found himself to be the country’s oldest, most experienced, highest run-getter and top wicket-taker in Test cricket, all in one go.

SO, HE SIMPLY took all that knowhow and applied it to per­fection in England, his incred­ible consistency coming through with a hundred and five fifties—one among the latter struck in the second innings at the Oval, scored largely beside his new-favou­rite batting partner, Sundar, who bashed out a bang-a-ball half-century (53) him­self. But the real batting hero of the final Indian innings of this series wasn’t even centurion Jaiswal, for that recognition went to nightwatchman Akash Deep, who overshadowed the hundred-hitter in their 107-run stand, Akash accounting for 66 of those runs. He will now be re­membered for that batting innings just as much as he anyway was for his 10-wicket match-haul—wickets that helped swing the Edgbaston Test India’s way.

Two key players missing from the cel­ebration at the Oval, but keenly integral to their success on this tour, were Bumrah and Pant. Despite playing in just three matches, Bumrah took as many as 14 wickets, includ­ing two five-wicket hauls. Pant, too, hauled in two centuries, but incredibly, they were struck in the first Test in Leeds, which India somehow lost from a winning posi­tion. But the Indian wicketkeeper’s most memorable moment on this tour didn’t have anything to do with his greatness on either side of the stumps. That occurred when he simply walked down the dress­ing room stairs of Manchester, the crowd applauding him for every agonising step he took with a broken foot.

Already diagnosed with a right leg fracture and ruled out for the final Test, Pant could’ve chosen the comfort of the dressing room over limping into action, and few would’ve begrudged him. Yet, he did, to give India an outside chance at playing for something bigger at Manches­ter, which they eventually did. And thus the comeback began, quite literally one painful step at a time.

Ben StokesIndian cricketMohammed SirajOval StadiumShubman GillTest against England