I gave serious consideration to calling in sick this morning and heading down to the cricket. After the day that England had I'm pretty disappointed that I didn't! I have my annual review at work on Friday, do you think it's a good idea to mention to my boss that I'm so committed to the role that I gave up watching Alistair Cook score a century in his final game, England captain Joe Root hit a hundred, James Anderson equal the world record for most wickets by a seamer in Test cricket and India captain Virat Kohli get a golden duck? I think I deserve a pay rise for not bunking off......
Analysis of the Day's Play
"If he's hitting big hundreds like this then why is he retiring?"
This will be the question that a lot of English cricket supporters will be asking this evening. England have been crying out for this type of performance from a player in their top order all summer and for large parts of the winter too. It was a classical Cook performance, full of stubborn defence punctuated by the odd boundary when the bad ball came along. He quite simply wore India's bowlers down and demoralised their entire team in the 6 and a half hours he was at the crease in making 147.
I think it's worth remembering that the announcement of his retirement alone will have been a huge weight off Cook's shoulders. He's mentioned in the press that he's been thinking about it for a while and just the release of getting it out into the public has obviously benefitted his state of mind. Today was a day for him to have a clear mind and to draw on all his mental strength for one last final innings.
The other thing with Cook is that despite all of his success over a 12 year career, you would never say that he has become England's leading Test scorer off the back of pure natural talent. All the runs he has scored have been the result of hard work and mental toughness and right now he doesn't feel he has the energy reserves to continue dig that deep and pull off these innings on a regular basis. However, let's also not forget that he has just signed a 3 year contract to continue to play first class cricket for Essex and with England having limited options at the top of the order and Australia due to visit next summer, what odds would you get on a Cook recall at some point in the next 12 months?
Cook's records today
- Became the 5th highest run scorer in Test history
- Became the highest scoring left-hander in Test history
- Became only the 5th player to score hundreds in their 1st & last matches
- Most ever hundred's in the 2nd innings of a match (15)
- Finished with an average of 45.35
Kohli gets it wrong again
After India had fought their way back into this match on all 3 previous days, I felt that they would come out and give it one last go to see if they could knock over England and give themselves a getable total to chase. The key therefore for India was to try and take 2 or 3 wickets in the first hour of play to get England under a bit of pressure. Surely if you are a captain and you are looking for wickets, particularly at the beginning of a day's play then you would turn to your best bowler in those conditions. As I have written on multiple occasions during this Test, Mohammed Shami is very much that man for India at the moment but Kohli decided to ignore him and go with Bumrah upfront instead.
Shami's full length outside off-stump had troubled Cook in both the 1st & 2nd innings and it was only through sheer good luck that he hadn't edged one of the balls through to the keeper and slips. I felt certain that if Shami could produce the same this morning that England's batsmen wouldn't/couldn't be so lucky again. Instead the decision to bowl Bumrah against Cook played right into his hands. Bumrah largely bowled over the wicket, pitching the ball outside leg, on short of a length. In Alistair Cook's 160 games prior to this one, I have never seen him struggle with short, straight bowling. He does however, have a weakness to the full ball outside off-stump but it was 11 overs and the best part of an hour before Kohli finally gave Shami a crack at Cook. If you were India's captain who would you have chosen to bowl to get Cook's wicket this morning?
Back to the drawing board for Dhawan
The beauty of Test match cricket played over longer series like this is the ongoing battles that it produces and the way that batsmen are constantly having to change and adapt in order to try and score their runs. I wrote in a previous blog how well I thought Dhawan had done when he came back into the team after being dropped for the 2nd Test. England's initital plan to Dhawan was simple, get the ball full and get it swinging away from him and he'll probably have a drive at it resulting in a knick to the keeper or slips. Dhawan countered this attack by getting across his stumps and playing the ball right under his nose as opposed to going for the booming drive. This worked for a while until England's bowlers came up with a response, instead of moving the ball consistently away from him, try and nip it back and target to the pads that given his new position on the crease are now bang in front of the stumps. Prior to this game, Dhawan had only been dismissed LBW 7 times in his international career in comparison to the 39 catches he's given. That figure has now risen to 9 after this match and Dhawan will once again need to go back to the drawing board to figure out a response to the threat. The big question is, will he be given another chance in the Test side?
Survive the morning and India may yet have hope
Credit to KL Rahul and Rahane who both played well in difficult circumstances this evening to at least ensure that their team avoided complete humiliation and give India a slender chance of saving this game. The key will be for India to lose no more than 1 wicket in the morning session and to frustrate England from there. The good news for India in that respect is that wickets in the morning session have generally been very difficult to come by. In fact in the 4 sessions we've had so far there have been just 3 wickets.
Can India bat through the day to save this match?
Enjoy the highlights of a very memorable days cricket - at least if you are England fan
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