At the brand new Narendra Modi Stadium, the skiddy pink ball confused the visiting batsmen by simply refusing to turnIn Indian cricket’s newest stadium, a tale as old as Test cricket itself unfolded as India took control of the third Test, bowling England out cheaply once more. England’s fear of the turning track came to the fore and India’s spinners again showed it is the straight ball that can prove most dangerous when there is turn on offer. Related: India skittle England for 112: third Test, day one – live! Related: Jack Leach: 'As a spinner, you’re going to get some treatment at times' Continue reading...
Ramachandra Guha’s A Corner of a Foreign Field was a landmark work and his new book finds him no less outspokenIt is nearly two decades since A Corner of a Foreign Field was published. The importance (not to say brilliance) of Ramachandra Guha’s work was immediately understood, and its subtitle – An Indian History of a British Sport – perfectly encapsulated its pioneering perspective. Here was a social history of the game that met and challenged the yet-lingering gaze of English colonialism across Asia – as profound and as timely, if not entirely as radical, as CLR James’s Beyond a Boundary had been in the 1960s.A week before Guha’s landmark work was published, in July 2002, India had chased down...
England are too reliant on their captain so I would bring in Bairstow at No 3 for the third Test against IndiaEngland are in Ahmedabad with the series tied at 1-1 with two to play and a day-night Test to come that might favour their seamers – we don’t know how the pink ball will react to the floodlights, but if anyone’s going to get it moving it’s Jimmy Anderson. It will also get soft quicker and tends to go dead after 20 overs, which means Ravi Ashwin should get less bounce, rag and spin and the batsmen get a fraction more time to react to it.If England’s seamers benefit from conditions Jasprit Bumrah will as well, but some of...
The bubbling superstar of Indian cricket delivers yet another cameo while England’s scene-stealer was their invisible manEven as England stumble-tripped through the desert sands of the Chennai pitch, it was, for two men, the best of times.The first, Rishabh Pant, is the bubbling superstar of Indian cricket. Baby-faced, fearless; a pint-sized serving of warm devil-may care with a cocktail cherry of brash. Many, many, words have been said and written in India about his batting, even more about his wicket-keeping, with a role-call of experts, including Sunil Gavaskar, calling for him to be relieved of the gloves. “A specialist middle-order batsman at No 5,” Gavaskar dreamed, during the series against Australia. But India’s selectors, as England’s, are greedy. They want...
My experience of the players’ biosecure environment made me appreciate how hard it is for Joe Root’s team England’s performance in the first Test was up there with one of their greatest wins overseas. To dominate India in their own backyard, a team who had lost just one of their last 35 home Tests prior to this one, is something special. The senior players in Joe Root and James Anderson led from the front, delivering near-perfect performances. Winning the toss and putting first-innings runs on the board was vital, something England have struggled with in the past, but they have now found stability in the top order and there was another dogged performance from Dom Sibley, who answered questions about...