England’s hopes of restoring some pride before leaving the Indian shores ended in an anti-climax of sorts, as their tour ended in an avalanche of wickets in the foothills of the Himalayas, giving the home side a handsome innings and 64-run win, and a 4-1 series triumph.
Moments after recording the convincing win inside three days of the fifth and final Test in Dharamsala, a proud Rohit Sharma credited his young side for responding to the challenges despite multiple setbacks during the series.
The unavailability of star players like Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, and Mohammed Shami has in a way put the onus on the younger players to prove themselves on the big stage and in a way stake their claim in the side.
Yashasvi Jaiswal, adjudged the ‘Player of the series’ has had a fantastic series scoring in excess of 700 runs. Shubman Gill managed to shut down the critics after the initial setbacks.
Sarfaraz Khan, Devdutt Padikkal and Dhruv Jurel scoring the runs, Ravichandran Ashwin’s emergency and his return the following day, it has been a dramatic series to say the least and India were able to conquer Bazball.
“At some stage people are going to go, we know that. All these guys are short on experience but they’ve played a lot of cricket. We’ve got to nurture them and make them understand the game. When put under pressure they responded pretty well. Credit goes to the entire team for that,” Rohit said.
“We talk about scoring runs, but it is as important to take 20 wickets to win the Test match. Everyone, all the bowlers came and responded. They wanted to make a difference with the ball in hand,” he added.
Amidst the ignominious 1-4 series scoreline signaling England’s first major setback in the Bazball era, one Englishman scaled his own peak, with the 41-year-old James Anderson claiming his 700th Test wicket in the day’s opening exchanges, to raise the bar to a new high for other seam bowlers to scale.
But the day and the Test belonged to another of Test cricket’s most enduring performers as off-spinner Ashwin, in his landmark 100th Test, took his own tally to 516 and counting, with 5 for 77, his 36th five-wicket haul, to help India seal the victory inside two sessions on the third afternoon.
England’s top three crumbled to Ashwin in the first 10 overs of the visitors’ second innings after India were bowled out for 477 in the first session of the day. England eventually lost five wickets inside just over half a session before lunch, with Ashwin accounting for four and Kuldeep taking one.
Ashwin then completed his five-wicket haul with the wicket of Ben Foakes shortly after resumption of play after which Bumrah took two wickets in an over to reduce England to their last two.
Shoaib Bashir then managed to stick around for a while with Joe Root and the pair put up 48 runs for the second last wicket. Bashir eventually fell to Jadeja on 13 after which Root decided to try and hit his way to a century.
Root, who put up a lone battle with the bat and scored 84 off 128 balls, finally holed out to Bumrah to become the last English wicket to fall in this series.
Ben Stokes arrived in India having won 13 out of 18 Tests but on his way back, he had four successive defeats and a first series loss, leaving a lot for scrutiny.
“Since the first Test match, we’re man enough to say we’ve been outplayed. We’ve got so much cricket coming up, taking the positives is something I’m looking forward to and driving this team forward. There have been small moments when we’ve not been able to wrestle momentum back. It’s about trying to understand those moments and be a bit more relentless,” he said.
Earlier in the morning session, Anderson ensured that England didn’t allow the overnight second-last pair of Kuldeep Yadav (30) and Jasprit Bumrah (20) to pick up from where they left off by making the former his 700th victim in Test cricket.
With the feat, Anderson joined the elite list of Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne, to take 700 Test wickets and the only fast bowler to scale the peak. Shoaib Bashir then finished his five-wicket haul, thanks in part to some lightning-fast glovework from Foakes, to end the Indian innings on 477 and thereby concede a healthy first innings lead of 259 runs.