Decider Test: Bumrah-led India takes on rejigged England

Here’s a trivia question. Without troubling the know-it-all Mr Google, can you recall who was the Player of the Match when India last played England in a Test match?

If you came up with Rohit Sharma, allow yourself a pat on the back (A confession: I had clean forgotten). You belong to that minority which has a wonderful memory, is a die-hard follower of the Indian team and is heavily invested in Test cricket.

If you didn’t remember immediately, that’s fine too. After all, it’s not often that a five-Test series begins in the August of one year and ends in the July of the next.

So much water has flowed under the Thames since Virat Kohli’s India departed English shores in the second week of September last year without completing the tour following the fear of a COVID outbreak in the camp once several members of the support staff tested positive. India were ahead 2-1 after four Tests, courtesy their conquest of London with victories at Lord’s and The Oval. They were primed to complete their first series win on English soil since 2007, given that form, momentum and confidence were with them going into the final game in Manchester. India were cohesive, settled, well oiled; England were ragged, timid, ripe for the taking. 3-1 appeared on the cards, never mind the vicissitudes of a sport as fickle as the English weather.

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Now, one is not so sure what course the final Test, beginning at Birmingham’s Edgbaston on Friday (July 1), will take.

For one thing, this is no longer Kohli’s India. The long-term skipper stepped down from the helm of the Test side during the tour of South Africa in January, the captaincy transitioning to the said Player of the Match at The Oval. Rohit, though, will have to bide his time for his first overseas Test as skipper, given that he tested COVID-positive a few days ago and is a non-starter.

Rohit’s absence as well as the unavailability of KL Rahul, his opening partner and the designated vice-captain when the squad was announced in May, guarantees that India will have a fourth skipper in just five Tests this year. That honour has deservedly been bestowed on Jasprit Bumrah, who will become the first paceman to lead India since the legendary Kapil Dev in 1987. Bumrah doesn’t have great experience of captaincy per se, but he has been the leader of the bowling attack since his Test debut in 2018 and is widely regarded as an excellent thinker whose man-management skills are laudable.

Between the last tour and now, there’s been a complete overhaul in the management group, with Rahul Dravid taking over as head coach from Ravi Shastri. India’s brand of cricket in the Rohit-Dravid era (for that’s what this is, never mind the designated skipper’s ill-timed trysts with injury and illness) won’t be dissimilar to the one in the Kohli-Shastri period, but their approach has already been decidedly less in-the-face with aggression channelised into skills rather than diluted by infringing on body language and use of the lip.

For all his chocolate-box exterior, Dravid is tough as nails. His calm demeanour might suggest otherwise, but he is anything but soft. As captain, Dravid was as attacking as he wasn’t as batsman, and was the early practitioner of the five-bowler theory with coach Greg Chappell as the driving force. His attention to detail and meticulousness in preparation are legendary, and while he may not thunder inspirational pep talks like his predecessor, his motivational skills are second to none.

Dravid won’t be unaware that this is his most daunting examination yet. His first overseas jaunt as coach ended in disappointment as India blew a 1-0 lead in South Africa, and he will hope to avoid the banana skin a second time, though his hands are tied with the crack combine of Rohit and Rahul, integral to India’s success in England last year, completely AWOL. A brand-new opening pair will have to negotiate the threat of James Anderson and Stuart Broad with the same felicity as Rohit and Rahul if the middle-order, also rejigged with Ajinkya Rahane put out to pasture, is to express itself.

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Fortunately for India, their bowling group remains unchanged, and it’s worth remembering the untold damage the Bumrah-led attack wreaked on the hosts 10 months ago. England will be wary of the multiple threats that Mohammed Shami, Ravindra Jadeja and R Ashwin too pose, with Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna and Shardul Thakur all itching to have a go.

That being said, India’s bowlers will by now have recognised that up against them is a batting group whose mindset and attitude has been widely reshaped in the last month. Like India, England have also had a radical leadership shake-up. Joe Root is no longer the captain, and Chris Silverwood has taken his coaching skills to Sri Lanka. In charge now are two men born in New Zealand 10 years apart – skipper Ben Stokes and Test coach Brendon McCullum – who both know only one way to approach the game.

England’s disastrous tour of the Caribbean earlier in the summer, when they lost a three-match series 0-1, drove Root to resign after having led the team to just one win in the preceding 17 Tests. Out went Silverwood too. While Stokes was a natural successor to Root, the ECB overlords pulled off a coup by roping in McCullum, a celebrated player and coach who has dramatically altered England’s game by hauling them to the present from the stone-age tactics they had mired themselves in.

Just how successfully Stokes and McCullum have been able to convince the larger group to buy into their philosophy was evident in the spectacular manner in which England crushed World Test Champions New Zealand 3-0 in a Test series that ended last week. All three wins were achieved chasing tricky targets – 277, 299 and 296 – that were made to look decisively miniscule by the ferocity with which Jonny Bairstow and the rest tore into the likes of Trent Boult and Tim Southee.

“Alarm bells have probably gone off somewhat around world cricket as to how this team is going to play,” former Kiwi skipper McCullum said after the last of those triumphs. India will have heeded those bells all right, though whether that has driven them to the throes of panic will only be clear in the next few days.