by England will meet the Dalai Lama on Wednesday to be blessed ahead of the fifth Test with plenty riding on it for the team and individuals.
This game can be seen as the final chapter of Bazball one. It is a natural breaking point at the top of the series against the Test championship finalists. As things stand, England are 5-3 down to Australia and India but with a bit more it could easily be 5-3 up.
Around the world, England have competed on an even footing playing a style of cricket that is recognizable as their own, achievements that were not expected when Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum upended the mess of the previous regime almost two years ago.
Stokes and McCullum regularly emphasize staying in the moment but planning for the next Ashes tour begins after this series. No major surgery is needed, just an injection here and there to strengthen those parts that are working well. The seam attack needs to be stirred up, the Foakes-Bairstow debate settled and six top players making way for Harry Brook. It is possible that the last two editions are interconnected.
Jonny Bairstow’s challenge is to keep his emotions in check in his 100th Test and if he had scored a century (two others have achieved the feat for England – Colin Cowdrey, Alec Stewart and Joe Root) he would have defended his place. Averaging 30 over his last 10 Tests, he needs runs. Ben Foakes has not made 50 in eight overs and his boundaries are batting with the exposed tail while keeping it excellent.
Ollie Robinson’s clean bowling in Ranchi was at odds with McCullum’s first-team philosophy and while Stokes has only received strong support in public – he never criticizes players in the media – England cannot trust him to make it through a Test match in one piece. and that must be taken into account in the thinking for the next Ashes. If released for this Test, a message will be sent. Mark Wood for Robinson with Stokes bowling for the first time since June was the plan after training on Tuesday.
Shoaib Bashir and Tom Hartley will be in the hunt for a place this summer, along with Jack Leach. Bashir is the better bowler, Hartley the complete package, so they too can tip the balance in their long-term favor this week. James Anderson still going, and bowled better in India than at any time last summer. He is two away from 700 wickets, he has no plans to retire and Stokes wants him around but younger players must also be given a chance. Not picking Gus Atkinson seems like a missed opportunity.
The snow-capped Himalayas provide a unique backdrop that can easily take a player’s mind off the game, but the last thing this team needs after squandering a winning position in Ranchi to lose the series than a 4-1 result. The last time England played a dead rubber in a series they lost outright to Australia in Hobart. The great defeat would disrupt the journey and call into question their progress. But if they were to win this week, a 3-2 result would probably defy most people’s expectations. India have not lost two Tests in a home series since they were beaten by England in 2012. The frustration this time is that England this week had the chance to have a very different feel.
“The message in the huddle this morning was when you get to the end of a long journey you start thinking about the end of the game,” Stokes said. “I don’t think anyone is thinking like that. Just because we’ve lost the series doesn’t mean this game is any different than last week or the week before.”
Dharamsala feels like Durham in May, it’s cold with rain in the forecast but the pitch is Indian. It looks good for batting, bare in places, but unlikely to bake under the sun and crack up. Small boundaries and a newly laid out lush field after the problems at the World Cup could make it a fast-scoring game that usually suits England but weak batsmen rarely turn it around on India’s tours.
Zak Crawley is the only England player with an average over 40 but with a blank in the century column. Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope played the best match of their careers but little else. Root has been flat, despite her century in the last Test, and Bairstow and Stokes have started well enough but haven’t stayed in. A misfiring middle order is why England are 3-1 down.
“It can be a very tough place to be a middle-order batsman. Being in the middle order is usually when the wicket starts to deteriorate. But that responsibility falls on us as players and when we look back on it, could there have been something different that we could have done, or did we work as hard in training?” said Stokes. “When you look back and tick all the boxes and say, no, we did everything we could within our powers to go out there and try to be successful, it didn’t work, the opposition was more better than us. And so it is. When it’s skill v skill, in the most important moments of the game, India is the better team when those big moments in the Test matches are very important.”
Ravichandran Ashwin also plays his 100th Test and showed no emotion or interest in the milestone when asked on Tuesday, in stark contrast to Bairstow who is desperate to mark it in style. Doing so would mean a lot to him and could provide the spark for England.
