Rolled over in Rajkot
If England’s defeat in the second test was ‘close’, then the 434-run defeat in the third was the polar opposite
For the first time, England’s ‘Bazball’ approach to cricket has been totally blown out of the water. Ben Stokes’ men slumped to 122 all out and a defeat of 434 runs- their second heaviest ever in terms of runs in Test history.
Chasing a monumental 557 runs to win, England slumped to 28–4, 50–7 and then 91–9. A burst from Mark Wood, who scored almost one-third of his team's second innings runs, made sure England reached three figures.
For the second test running, England conceded over or around 400 in the first innings. Like in Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam, England finished the first innings with a 100+ deficit. On this occasion, they reached 224–2 in pursuit of 445, only for eight wickets to fall for less than 100.
England bit off more than they could chew for the second time in this series, and a supposedly weakened India inflicted England’s worst defeat by runs in almost a century. A big part of this has been thanks to back-to-back double centuries for Yashasvi Jaiswal, but also down to reckless English batting and bowlers unable to take advantage of a good start.
In India’s first innings, the English attack reduced them to 33–3, Ravindra Jadeja and Rohit Sharma then put on over 200 for the fourth wicket, ploughing India towards their huge total. India showed their class, and in turn, England were made to rue missed chances and some poor shot selection.
An alarming thing for England fans will be the way their side collapsed in the second innings. It would have taken a miracle to chase down the huge total, but the collapse became a common feature of an English batting display before Brendon McCullum took over as coach.
The last Ashes series in Australia saw England bowled out for under 200 on six occasions, with the drastic collapse in Rajkot one that would have had fans thrown back to those dark days in the depth of winter. England have progressed past this and keeping these horror shows confined to the history books is important- with one of the main improvements being the solidified opening stands between Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett. The former’s 150 was the brightest of moments for England.
A question that was raised before the series started was ‘Can Bazball work in India?’. After three Test matches, it can be concluded that it has worked — but in spells not long enough to have a lasting impact. Back-to-back defeats for the McCullum/ Stokes era are rare, with Australia being the only other side to complete this. With two tests remaining, England are far from out of it — but some tough lessons need to be learned from ahead of the Ranchi test.
both this England side and their approach to Test cricket are far from the finished article. Issues are there to be solved, and a lack of runs in the middle order is a particularly concerning trend that seems to have implanted itself in England’s line-up.
The Bazball era has brought more positives than negatives in the last two and a half years. The brutal yet often calculated batting approach has seen England go around the world and win plenty of Test matches, but this series so far has shown that the aggressive tactics can count for nothing if you allow the opposition to score 400 on multiple occasions.
