Victory came in the modern India way – with a swagger and without taking a backward stepOllie Robinson emerges from the darkness of the Long Room on his way out to the middle. England are 90 for seven and Robinson is about to face the hat-trick ball from Mohammed Siraj. All around the ground, India fans are in raptures. Standing at first slip, Virat Kohli is waving his arms, conducting them like an orchestra. The prevailing smell is of English blood.As Robinson descends the pavilion steps, a couple of India players in tracksuits are coming back in the opposite direction, having just been out on the field delivering drinks. Robinson stops and waits for them to step aside. They do...
Slow starts are nothing new to the batsman, but 33 innings since his last Test century the murmurs of discontent from within India have begun to swellRishabh Pant is the next man in. Everyone knows Rishabh Pant is the next man in. Even when he’s not batting, the India No 6 still manages to impose himself. The commentators warn in menaced tones about the “dangerous Pant”.The cameras try to pick him out on the India balcony. And right at this moment, with the second Test agonisingly poised and Lord’s a hive of tension, the next man in is reclining across a bench, watching the game from a horizontal position. Related: Mark Wood and Moeen Ali finally break India resistance in...
The Saturday of a headquarters Test has its own mythology which both the weather and the cricket lived up toKL Rahul stood in the deep, with champagne corks arced around him like a shower of meteorites. India’s centurion did not look impressed. He had owned this ground on Thursday. But this was Saturday, when the crowd tends to treat the outfield as an extension of its picnic area. Seeing how far one can spray one’s Piper-Heidsieck has become a sport in its own right.It is the posho equivalent of throwing coins from the stands and ought by rights to earn a swift fine or an Asbo. But the Saturday of the Lord’s Test has its own rituals and its own...
The put-upon captain might have faded away in his fifth year in the job but instead he has played some of his greatest inningsIf you wanted, you could still probably pick a few holes. He edged a few through the slips. He got bogged down a little in the 90s, and then again in the 150s. He didn’t hit a single six. Does an innings even still count these days if it isn’t accompanied by a big flashing bar along the bottom of the screen screaming “OH YEAH”? Most unforgivably of all, Joe Root’s unbeaten 180 against India lasted almost nine hours. Good luck fitting that into BBC Two’s teatime schedule. Related: Masterful Joe Root hauls England back into contention...
The opener is awkward and unspectacular but often effective as he demonstrated with a battling 49 against India at Lord’sAs England’s openers walked out to bat at Lord’s on the second afternoon, a ghostly figure took his seat on the balcony to watch them. Half in light, half in shadow, Haseeb Hameed perched in the doorway of the dressing room and patiently waited for a chance that has been almost five years in the making.Hameed is 24 years old, England’s incumbent No 3 batsman, a player of immense promise and potential, and yet ever since his Test debut in India in late 2016 his career has largely been conceived in terms of loss. In a parallel universe, in the world...