On Tuesday, 17 August 2021 at 04:51:29 UTC+10, FBInCIAnNSATerroristSlayer wrote:
> Great Column.
>
> ===============================================================
>
> https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/eng-vs-ind-2nd-test-lords-5th-day-jasprit-bumrah-and-mohammed-shami-and-england-s-great-malfunction-1273654
>
> Bumrah and Shami, endless mindgames, and England's great malfunction
>
> It's difficult to recall a more self-destructive passage of play from
> England than on the fifth morning of the Lord's Test
>
> Up in the media centre during the fifth-day lunch break, the great and
> the good (as well as the significantly better than average) were all
> united in their astonishment at the malfunction they were witnessing.
> Phil Tufnell, for one, was struggling to recall a more self-destructive
> passage of play from an England team in his lifetime, and he had lived a
> fair few of them.
>
> But this… this was something extra special. Rarely has a match-winning
> position been squandered so wantonly, so pointedly, so brainlessly - as
> England laid down their arms in the five-day war of attrition, and chose
> instead to lose themselves in an irrelevant battle of wills. And, by the
> time Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami had backed up their extraordinary
> batting by picking off an opener apiece for ducks to leave England 1 for
> 2, it was shaping up as the most wholesale capitulation ever known.
>
> Everything that transpired on the fifth morning stemmed from the ugly
> but compelling events of the third evening. In the dying moments of that
> day, Bumrah's ten-ball over to England's No. 11 James Anderson, with
> barely a delivery in his half of the pitch and his front foot pushing
> the line in every sense, ignited the tinder-dry sensibilities of a
> rivalry that has rarely needed an excuse to get rowdy in recent years.
> After all, Anderson has been around long enough to remember the Trent
> Bridge Test of 2007, when a row over jelly beans provided India with
> just enough righteous indignation to make sure they had a series-sealing
> victory.
> As the players left the field, the animosity was plain. A grinning
> Bumrah, arms raised in a questioning fashion, as if to say to a livid
> Anderson: why shouldn't I stick it up your jumper? Virat Kohli,
> inevitably, was in the thick of the action too, just as he would be on
> the resumption of his own duel with Anderson on day four, during which
> he informed England's greatest bowler that "this is not your f******
> backyard". Words that, on the evidence of the bunfight that has
> subsequently erupted, look set to enter the annals alongside Michael
> Clarke's promise to deliver Anderson a "broken f****** arm" in Brisbane
> in 2013-14.
> The point being, of course, that Anderson is old enough and ugly enough
> to look after himself in the international arena. He did not need his
> team to get emotional on his behalf. And, in fact, for the first 30
> minutes of the final day's play, England's cricket was smart and
> focussed. Anderson and Ollie Robinson played the long game with the
> delayed new ball, challenging the dangerous Rishabh Pant to risk the
> first move. And though he duly did so with a familiar gallop and thwack
> through the covers off Anderson, Robinson did for him four balls later,
> with line, length, and a defensive prod to the keeper. It's amazing what
> can happen when you bowl your best ball to any given batter.
>
> By degrees, however, England lost their grip as soon as Pant had left
> the stage. Instead of caving in as the analytics said they would,
> India's lower-order - ostensibly one of the weakest in modern Test
> history - signalled from the outset a refusal to play by their numbers.
> It took a moment of genuine cunning from Robinson (probably England's
> last example of thinking cricket in the innings) to confound a feisty
> Ishant Sharma, a perfectly pitched knuckleball at 64mph, crashing into
> his front pad like a microlight with engine failure. But thereafter,
> their performance was entirely knuckleheaded.
> Foremost among England's brain-fade was the use - or rather, misuse - of
> Mark Wood. Speaking to Sky Sports before the start of play, Wood
> confirmed that he had heard a "bit of a crack" when landing heavily on
> his right shoulder on the fourth evening, words that ought to have
> filled England's management with untold dread, given how eviscerated
> their pace-bowling stocks have become since the long-term injuries to
> Jofra Archer and Olly Stone.
> Wood did not take the field at all in the first half-hour, seemingly a
> wise precaution, for there really was no need to change a plan that was
> still on course to deliver a victory target of less than 200. Instead,
> no sooner had he stepped on the field of play, he was back into the
> action - his "external" injury permitting him an immediate stint - and
> then, five balls into his first over, he flung himself to intercept a
> push from Shami and turned white with pain as he jarred the exact same
> shoulder. It should, by rights, have been the end of his day, there and
> then.
> Instead, the arrival of Bumrah meant all bets were off. As if his
> smiling visage wasn't enough to get under England's skin, his first act
> was to ask Haseeb Hameed at short leg to kneel before him and tie up his
> dangling shoe-lace, potentially a coincidence, but an expertly inserted
> length of needle either way. The first ball he faced from Wood was a
> bouncer - inevitably. So, too, the second. So, too, the third, as Bumrah
> wound into a hook, and found enough edge to get off the mark.
> Robinson rumbled in for another over, but despite inducing a low edge
> into the cordon off Shami, Joe Root was suddenly getting twitchy about
> the size of India's lead. Bumrah sensed the mood, with a rasping
> straight drive that deflected off the non-striker's stumps, and
> suddenly, that was that. No more freebies, as England's best bowler of
> the morning found himself limited to a solitary wide slip, and a phalanx
> of boundary riders, essentially charged with keeping it tight while Wood
> knocked some blocks off.
>
> It's worth at this point to remember exactly who England were dealing
> with. The older members of the team might have had a dim and distant
> memory of Shami's vague batting functionality, after he had made his
> only previous Test half-century at Trent Bridge in 2014 - a deck so dead
> that the match is now best remembered for Alastair Cook's one and only
> Test wicket.
> But Bumrah… now he was a proper batting bunny. Statistically, if not
> stylistically, he had long been the closest thing to an heir to the most
> feckless tailender of them all, New Zealand's Chris Martin, having made
> a grand total of 18 runs in his first 19 innings, including a highest
> score of 6, and an average of 1.80. All of a sudden, he's harvested 62
> runs in three innings on this England tour - the same, shockingly, as
> his captain, Kohli, and at a higher average too.
> It was in Wood's third over that the mood of the match took its decisive
> turn. Prior to taking strike, Bumrah pulled out of his stance,
> gesticulating at England's fielders, Root and Jos Buttler in particular,
> as Shami and umpire Michael Gough became involved too. His response was
> an angry hack, flat and fast through point as Kohli on the India balcony
> pumped his fist in approval and the lead marched into the 190s. And
> though Wood responded with a crushing bouncer to the side of the helmet,
> it was clear by this stage that such intimidation was pointless. Every
> ball not aimed at the stumps was an invitation for India to burgle
> another run, to bolster an already threatening stand, to exceed
> expectations that were already far beyond what they had hoped their tail
> could be capable of.
> Throughout it all, there was no sign of Anderson returning to restore
> order, at least, not until Root, perhaps already sensing that the moment
> was lost and that England's only hope was for him to switch back into
> batting mode, vanished into the dressing room, presumably to run a few
> options through the number-crunchers. "Give it to Jimmy, dammit!" was
> the computer's unsurprising verdict, but Shami greeted his third ball
> with a clip through midwicket that Dom Sibley could only dream of
> playing, before Root himself dropped Bumrah at slip off Moeen Ali, a
> clanger by any standards, but a head-in-hands moment that gave every
> snapper in the ground their 1000-word picture.
> And the remainder of England's fielding effort was a fever dream. Shami
> slammed Ali for four and six over cow corner to march to a 57-ball
> fifty, and after the lunch break had passed in a will-they-won't-they of
> declaration speculation, the pair got another trio of boundaries in nine
> balls, either side of a five-minute hiatus while Shami waited, with
> trousers at half-mast, for the delivery of a correct thigh pad. Again,
> it could have been an accident, but like Bumrah's shoelace, there was no
> reason to think it wasn't another psychological ploy. For England had
> been outmatched in the mindgames every step of the day. And as it turned
> out, their agonies were only just beginning.

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