India vs England, 4th Test, Nagpur

Trott, Bell edge England towards safety and series

 

India v England, 4th Test, Nagpur, 4th day

As an individual event this torturous Test match will not linger long in the memory, but for what the end result enabled England to achieve will be chronicled as one of the team's finest hours.

By batting out the final day with barely an alarm, largely through a 208-run stand between Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell, who both scored hundreds, England secured their first series win in India for 28 years.

India have significant weaknesses and problems that need to be addressed, but it has been England's excellence over the last three games that has exposed those shortcomings. On the last day in Nagpur it was two batsmen earning redemption for relatively lean years that prevented any late nerves and added to the complete team nature of the performance.

Trott's hundred, his eighth, was his first since March and for Bell, while also being his first hundred in India, it ended an even longer wait for three figures going back to The Oval against this opposition in 2011 at the end of what had threatened to be a low trip for him.

What was really extraordinary, though, is the turnaround, not only from a crushing defeat in Ahmedabad but also from a year that was on the brink of being their worst ever in Test cricket. Throw into the mix controversy surrounding their star batsman and a change of captain before this series and it is one of England's finest achievements. Alastair Cook, who was able to watch contently from the dressing room during the final day, has laid down a high marker for his captaincy career.

India needed a couple of early wickets to send a few tremors through the England camp but they never threatened. The new ball was taken one over into the day without making a jot of difference. Barring a couple of sessions, this has been a Test devoid of excitement and low in the watchability stakes. England, of course, will not care in the slightest about that but pitches like this are far worse that the "result" surfaces that get the ICC twitchy. If it is not marked down the game's priorities are wrong.

However dead the surface, for Trott and Bell there was a job to do in the first session and they did it expertly. There was good intent from the pair in the first half an hour of the day to ensure the lead was soon in excess of 200 and getting out of sight of India.

Trott has played as freely as anyone in the game and twice drove Ravindra Jadeja beautifully through mid-on - or, in the second case, under mid-on as R Ashwin dived over the ball. His leg-side play was wonderfully elegant throughout the innings. He reached his hundred with two boundaries in three balls against Piyush Chawla, a cover drive followed by a trademark flick wide of mid-on, and allowed a little bit of emotion to come through his steely demeanour.

Trott had not reached three figures since the second innings against Sri Lanka in Galle earlier this year, and it was only his second hundred since making 203 against Sri Lanka in Cardiff in May 2011. However, he has continued to chip in, the average has only dipped and not plummeted, and once again England were immensely grateful to their rock-solid No. 3.

It did not look as though he was going to give away the chance to boost his statistics during the afternoon and it came as a surprise when he clipped Ashwin to leg slip shortly before tea, a few runs short of setting a new record fourth-wicket stand for England in India. That mark remains held by Andrew Strauss and Paul Collingwood, who added 214 in Chennai in 2008.

Trott's Warwickshire team-mate, Bell, was equally composed in making his first major contribution of a difficult series, where his frailties in India had been exposed again. Although the situation was comfortable for England by lunch, that was not the case when Bell had come in at 94 for 3 so it was a strong display of character from him. His fifty, just the second he had scored in India, came with a straight drive off Ashwin as the off-side play that makes him so pleasing to watch when in form began to make an appearance.

He was given a life on 75 when Virender Sehwag spilled a catch at slip and he would have been run out for 97 by a direct hit from square leg. For much of the afternoon he eked along at a pace befitting this match, but started using his feet to Jadeja, lofting him for a straight six followed by a slightly scuffed boundary over mid-on.

Bell's series had begun ingloriously when he tried to launch Pragyan Ojha over the top first ball in Ahmedabad only to find mid-off, for which he was heavily, and rightly, criticised. But he is too good a player to shelve the shot. Deep into the final session, shortly before Cook called his men in to put the final stamp on the result, Bell tickled Ashwin down to fine leg from his 293rd delivery. Everything really had come full circle.

 England 330 and 161 for 3 (Trott 66*, Bell 24*) lead India 326 for 9 dec (Kohli 103, Dhoni 99, Anderson 4-81) by 165 runs

Read more...

England Lose Openers After Solid Stand

England lost their openers during the afternoon session as they built a lead of 85 by tea on a laborious fourth day in Nagpur while trying to ensure the opportunity of a famous series win does not slip from their grasp. Nick Compton fell on the stroke of the interval to give India timely boost but the home side had used strange tactics earlier in the day when they batted on defensively for an hour.

England only have one aim in mind - to keep hold of the precious series lead - so the pace of the game is no concern to them, but India's passiveness when they resumed their innings on 297 for 8 and batted bizarrely for an hour took vital time out of the match. MS Dhoni finally declared with India still four runs behind.

The pitch remains docile in the extreme, verging on dead, and their best hope was that the pressure started to tell on England during their final push for a famous series victory. The third innings of a Test which is seemingly heading to a draw can leave a side uncertain how to play. England's lead certainly hasn't grown at a pace to take the game completely away from India.

Cook and Compton, however, ensured there were no early alarms as they cautiously reached lunch. Compton struck the day's first boundary, five minutes before the break, when he edged a very full delivery from R Ashwin to third man. Cook had reached 5 from 78 balls before finding the rope with a cover drive from another very full ball.

For the second time in the match Cook was removed through an umpiring error from Kumar Dharmasena when he played forward to Ashwin and the ball spun past the outside edge. There was a strong appeal, and there was a noise, but replays confirmed that Cook's bat had struck the ground and he had missed the ball. It left Cook with a match tally off 14 off 121 balls, but it did nothing to dilute the epic nature of his series which ended with 562 runs.

Compton's solidity alongside Cook has been one of the major plusses to come out of this series. His defence had been firm throughout the session but in the final over before tea he was given lbw to Pragyan Ojha. Replays suggested an inside edge but the ball was also caught in the gully so the presence of DRS would only have changed the mode of dismissal.

One of more interesting moments of the day involved Jonathan Trott. A delivery from Ravindra Jadeja slipped out of the spinner's hand, during the delivery action, and lobbed towards the on-side. Trott, as was completely within his rights, skipped towards the ball then smacked it to the square-leg boundary to bring smiles from both sides.

Quite what India were trying to achieve at the start of the day was hard to fathom as they added 29 in 13 overs. Ashwin started by declining singles, while Ojha purely blocked, before a message from the dressing room encouraged Ashwin to take the singles on offer. The problem with that was that Ojha couldn't get the ball away so the match went nowhere.

England were quite happy to let India dawdle. It quickly became clear that they weren't trying too hard to take the remaining two wickets, content to allow India to prod and poke around to take time out of the game. When Monty Panesar bowled Ojha, helped by the rare sight of some turn and bounce from the rough, there was barely a flicker of emotion from any of the players and even Panesar - who had waited 50 overs for a wicket - didn't manage as much as a clap.

Further instructions came out from the dressing room twice, but the plans never really changed much from the batsmen. Ashwin, who has batted superbly during the series, was in no trouble at the crease but neither did he do any damage and it took nine overs for anything other than a single to be scored.

Read more...