About as good a win away from home as I have seen from England in my 30 years or so watching cricket. Mumbai and Melbourne maybe ahead of it right now but England won those series. If they can win this series, this one goes right on the top shelf.
Once Sibley and Root got set together on Day 1, England were pretty dominant.
Yes, a very pleasing performance and in the highly unlikely event Joe Root is reading this, I apologise for questioning his judgement about the declaration - Stanislaus had it right with their earlier comment.
I woke up at about 0730 GMT and saw 6 wickets down - thought I would catch the end of it when I got back from dropping my son off at nursery but by the time I returned at 0815 it was all over!
Yes it was solid all round, did I hear right that India had only had 4 home test defeats in the last 40 years? I knew they were hard to beat but didn’t know it was quite that dominant.
Interesting as well that of the 20 India wickets taken it was a fairly even split between pace and spin over both innings. Suggestive of a decent balance.
That’s not quite right. Here’s the list of home Test defeats since the start of 2010 for India:
Yeah, they’ve lost 5 test matches at home in that time. Remarkably, England are responsible for 3 of these.
There is still a long way to go and, being honest, I still see India winning the series as the most likely result. This was one hell of a performance though.
It was, however, the first time India have lost at Chennai this century and only the second time since 1985: StatsGuru
Maybe that’s what you heard?
Anyway a massive performance by England - after all the discussion, India didn’t come close to saving the game, much less threatening to win. It turned into a traditional Indian last-day pitch at the end with lots of rough and variable bounce - Kohli got a complete shooter from Stokes. A very good toss to win.
Apparently England were trying to pace their second innings because they didn’t want to bowl more than 10-15 overs on the 4th day - they wanted the ball still new on the next morning when their bowlers would be fresh.
It also makes the Test Championship picture interesting - India need to win the series to reach the final. England need to win 3-1 or better. A drawn series, or 1-0, 2-0 or 2-1 to England lets Australia sneak in.
So the Aussies will be cheering for England, at least until they win another game.
You know I just don’t trust my memory of exactly what I heard now, there were lots of stats being chucked around and I probably have conflated a couple but I do recall my initial reaction to what I thought I heard was “really?”
anyhoo, fascinating game.
Sounds plausible, it also sounds like retrospective wisdom as well but who knows? Roll on the next match at which normal service will be resumed.
Well perhaps, but it’ll be borderline inaudible.
Some serious brass neck from Kohli this morning - clean bowled by Moeen and stands there like it never happened. They wind up going to a video review to show “yes, tell your story walking pal”.
The pitch looks like it’s going to end this game well before Day 5. It’s already breaking up. Rohit may have already played a match changing hand with 80 at better than a run a ball.
Some interesting umpiring today. One that cost England a review (which was subsequently returned) when they clearly got a wicket but the 3rd umpire decided not to roll all the way through and to see the ball flick off a glove. A stumping that looked, at best, very tight also not given to England - didn’t look like anything behind the line to me and not looking at the reverse angle to check either.
This is why neutral umpires are a must. It doesn’t look good when home umpires are involved in decisions like this. Just remove the suggestion of impropriety. Admittedly, Covid is currently an issue but there have been suggestions through the last year that the review system means that home umpires could return. Sorry, not for me.
England are likely to have to bat very well to get something out of this game. The pitch looks pretty tasty and think India have the better spinners to use it too.
India closing on 300/6, and even if India get rolled for another 20 tomorrow they will feel they’ve got at least a competitive total. As Cumbrian says, this is going to need another top batting performance to avoid defeat.
I think the technical term for what England are now is fucked.
From the heights of delight at getting the last 4 for just 29, to the depths of despair at 52/5.
Aggers (and many others) criticising the pitch - one of the BBC bods tried to counter with the state of the pitch when Broad got 8-15 against the Aussies. Is there any real comparison there, or is it just a weak attempt at satanic advocacy?
Cumbrian, your comment on ‘home umpiring’ got me thinking - is there any reason the third umpire cannot literally work from home, possibly on a different continent? Ok there would be a few extra seconds in communication delays, but hopefully it’s something the ICC is considering. I don’t like the 3 reviews because it encourages teams to gamble on them all the time, which wastes time.
On the pitch: it’s a Test match away from home. The point is that you need to be able to play in unfriendly conditions to win. It seams in England, if you can’t play the moving ball you’re screwed. If you can’t play the spinning ball in Asia on difficult tracks, you’re equally screwed. The idea that countries should produce sporting pitches as opposed to those benefiting the home side is for the birds. No one does it and England are as culpable as anyone. Bluntly, be better. Rohit, Rahane and Pant scored runs. India has better spinners. I shrug. This is reality.
Foakes has played the spinners well. It’s not like it’s impossible. Pope did well too and his dismissal was extremely disappointing as a result, strangled down leg by Siraj.
3rd umpires: at minimum, these should be a specialist position rather than rotating through the standing umpires for a series, imo. Having them in a central position as the NFL and MLB do is a decent option. They just need people who really know what to do and all the intricacies of getting the right decision.
They also, stipulated, need to be neutral. All umpires should be. Apart from anything, not all the most substantive decisions are wickets. Hair no balling Murali in Australia, the Shakoor Rana affair in Pakistan and so on would still leave home umpires open to accusation of bias. Ball tampering and all that is another potential problem area. Every time the away team comes off on the poor end of a decision from home umpires, no matter how well intentioned, it looks bad. No other major international sport that I can think of has refs or umpires from the home team. Cricket shouldn’t be any different imo.
England have pulled off some pretty impressive recoveries in recent years, including some involving bigger leads than this, but India have won this test match.
If this gets into day 4, I’ll be surprised. If it does, it will only be a matter of a couple of wickets to get.
195 down on first innings, if England can shoot India out for 40 or so, we’ll likely only lose by about 150 runs.
Meanwhile, in Dhaka, Bangladesh have 4 wickets and 80 ish to get to win against the West Indies. Bangladesh are a pretty serious proposition at home, this would be a belting series win for the Windies if they can complete it, especially given the players they have missing.
Windies win by 17 runs. Hell of a series they’ve had.
That’s a great testiment to the depth of the young cricket in WI at the moment.