India finish 4-1 against broken England

India have won easily. They used the backup to their backup keeper, a bunch of seamers around Jasprit Bumrah, having dropped Axar Patel, KL Rahul playing one Test and Virat off on paternal duties. And they did it all on flat wickets. Quite the effort, even if England fell away. India got rocked early, brushed the dirt off their shoulders and did the work. 

Today, England batted like they’d already booked their seats and meal preferences on the plane home. At least they got rid of India’s bottom order. There was a chance for a while that they would be just bowling so long that they might end up with an extra day of cricket. But they bowled well, and batted horribly, the perfect way to get home early. 

Losing 4-1 will prove to many people that Bazball didn’t work, but they got 40 wickets out of two spinners with less experience than a Joe Root spell. Their openers worked repeatedly, and their worst player of spin almost made a double hundred. Not to mention that Harry Brook never made it over, and the only real spinner had to go home after a match. Forget the morals and hype, which are both annoying; the real idea of Bazball at its core is how they make this absolutely shitshow of a team competitive.

They lost 4-1, and they went down 3-1 last time. Many will be stuck on that, but they were competitive in a way that the last series wasn’t. They actually turned up this time, and India had to work them out. In the end, India kinda of just sat back and let England do their thing. 

Maybe nothing is more Bazball than the exchange between Shubman Gill and Jonny Bairstow as chronicled by Rav Man on Twitter:

What I love about this is that Bairstow is trying to embarrass Gill for his failure with Anderson. But Gill's wicket was not a real win for England. The game was already over by then. Then there is Gill asking about Bairstow’s form. And if these quotes are right, it ends with Bairstow losing the plot. 

Isn’t that kind of what happened in this series? England had a win, but when you look deeper, it wasn’t all that much. More than they would have had playing normal cricket, but maybe less if they had combined the best of Bazball with some more sensible cricket. But after all this fun, what are we left with? India are way better than England. And we knew that before. 

R Ashwin & Joe Root’s return to form

A lot of this is definitely down to bowling with the new ball - the hardness of the ball, plus the ability to slide it through helped him there. He finishes as the highest-wicket taker of the series. Not too bad for someone who was considered 'finished' not too long ago.

All these balls landed around the same spot, but had varying degrees of turn.

The angle of his hands are a little bit different. The grip in the ball to dismiss Crawley is more side on, so he gets more side spin on that delivery. There was a bit more overspin in the one that Ollie Pope tried to sweep, and got done by the extra bounce.

Root had a pretty slow start to the series, and ended pretty well. How much was it down to the fact that he bowled 107 overs in the first three matches, and just 11 in the next two? It probably played a part, but it was not the only reason.

This was a proper Joe Root innings - milking the leg-side off the backfoot against the spinners, driving against the pacers, and boundaries in pretty much every part of the ground.

Both these guys can play. But their bad form at the start of the series probably made us forget about that.

Kuldeep Yadav traps England's batters on the backfoot

England want to play him off the backfoot. But it can be a bit of problem, especially against Kuldeep because of his angle to the right-handers, spinning it into the stumps. That increases the chances of getting more LBWs. He has a knack of getting the ball to keep low compared to other wrist spinners, even on wickets that didn't particularly assist it.

Looking at these dismissals, I often thought, "Have they gone back to a ball that they could have easily gone forward too?"

A review of Jasprit Bumrah and Ben Stokes in this series

We have to start by mentioning how rare it is for a seamer to pick up over 15 wickets in a Test series in India. You have to be fit enough to bowl a lot of overs plus be a constant wicket-taking threat.

Ishant Sharma was a youngster playing only his third series in India, and the fact that he got Ponting, Clarke and Watson three times each makes it special.

Umesh Yadav was excellent throughout the series. His skills to attack the stumps regularly were well-suited for these conditions. He was an integral part of India's home dominance.

Dale Steyn took his wickets at a strike rate of under 35. But Jasprit Bumrah took his wickets even quicker, and only Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie average less. Bumrah's performance is up there with the best overall performances by a seamer in this century.

Ben Stokes has not been a massive factor away for a while now. His technique is not particularly suited to bat against spin in Asia. His bat path He is not very good at using his feet, and his most important shot against spin is the slog sweep. But it is not just him against spin, right? You would have expected him to average more, especially because he did not bowl in the first four matches of this tour.

James Anderson's 700 

James Anderson is 41 years old. He was bowling to an Indian tail looking set. He came in and bounced Kuldeep Yadav, taking him on the glove. Think about that for a moment. The man is older than the wheel, he’s dying his hair in a last ditch attempt for us to stop mentioning it. He’s on an Indian wicket, sure, one with more pace and carry than most. But still, Jimmy’s bouncer lost energy somewhere around the time One Direction released their first album. 

We have had players playing long careers before, but they are batters, spinners, or allrounders. Imran Khan played 21 years like Anderson, but he didn’t bowl in the last year. 

What we have seen from Anderson is stupid, it shouldn’t have happened, and therefore we should never see it again. I just want to point out that people probably said that when Fred Trueman took his 300. 

Test cricket always seems to - as Jeff Goldblum might say - find a way. 

Ben Duckett's dismissal 

According to CricViz, Ben Duckett had not used his feet to the spinners all series. The first ball he did, he was out. And you can see why. Look at his foot, you can see he’s on his way down the wicket before the ball has been bowled. He just decided to come down, and did it like someone who doesn’t do it. 

To start with, he comes down on the legside of the ball. Forget the line here, but even if it was straighter, he would have never had the chance to get any pads on it.

But his next step is actually further down leg. Like he walked away from the ball with his next step and now he is a mile away from the ball. This is terrible. 

The final bit of this shot is a mess, a cross bat slog. And it has to be, because he was so far from the ball they only way to reach it was with an angled blade. He ran away from the ball so much that playing a straight shot was impossible. 

Finally, he also yorked himself a little. Why, because he wasn’t coming down based on what the ball was, but just because he wanted to. 

Just an all round shit show. But what makes a opener play a shot like this? Because this is what a number eight playing under-14 cricket does. 

Well, mostly, Ashwin. He is so good with the new ball, he averages 18.5 with the ball less than ten overs old at home. But there is more, because obviously he is even better when doing this job in the second innings. So what about when he does this at home in the second innings, against left-handers? Good luck, gentlemen. Currently when batting on Indian wickets in the second innings against Ashwin, Duckett averages 6.5. 

So, those things scramble your brain. And let’s be honest, Duckett has a different kind of brain to begin with. 

These are his deliveries in this innings. The first ball went wrong, and Duckett tucked it away. The next ball was an attempted sweep that he was nowhere near, and that seemed to spook him. But the ball that really shook him was his fourth. He tried to defend a normal straight off spin delivery, and the ball skidded on, took the inside part of the bat and went in the air fine of Sarfaraz Khan under the helmet. That reminded him of all of these. 

This is the first Test when Ashwin slid one through and Duckett tried to defend and missed it by a very long way and was out LBW. 

In the second Test, Duckett got another one around the kneeroll that was straight. This time he got an inside edge that hit his pad and then was caught by KS Bharat as there was no short leg in. 

And then the fourth Test, the same ball again, an inside edge that this time was taking by the short leg. 

When he was almost dismissed by the same sliding middle and leg length ball again, he panicked. He ran down the wicket like his arse was on fire and played a shot that you would be upset to play in a beer game. 

This actually looks like he is playing a shot to a ball delivered from cover. And I think he would have missed that as well.