Shrug after being bowled by Jasprit Bumrah’s offcutter was of a man who felt he’d done everything right
Vithushan Ehantharajah25-Jan-2024As part of England’s preparations during their pre-tour training camp, ground staff at Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed training complex were given creative instructions.The grass on the pitches was to be shaved as close as Ben Stokes’ fade, raked, then covered in sawdust. The aim was to recreate the most extreme surfaces they might encounter in India – then go even further.The results? Well, as intended. Batters were challenged to the nth degree, wearing deliveries on the shins or helmets. Personal wins were small, humiliation in abundance. Complaints, however, were zero.Related
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Therein lay the true aim of this exercise from a batting point of view. Shake off the errors, snap out of the pearl-clutching previous English sides have taken to India when surfaces turn square and embrace the doubt. And if you get a good one, move on. Ultimately – commit to the bit that has served this group so well.Naturally, it was Stokes, the captain, who encompassed this. His shrug after being bowled by a Jasprit Bumrah offcutter was of a man who felt he had done everything right. Which, in this instance, was to give himself room on the leg side, expose his stumps and shape to hammer through the off side.Stokes was the last wicket to fall, walking off having struck 70 off 88 in England’s total of 246 after calling correctly at the toss. This was the team’s highest score in seven innings away to India since their 578 in the first Test of the last tour in 2021. The run rate of 3.81 per over just a 1.01 dip from their usual Bazball rate, which can be put down to how much tougher it is to rotate the strike against a peerless spin trio.”I think we were over the par, to be honest,” said Ben Duckett, who struck a breezy 35 in an opening stand of 55 with Zak Crawley. “I think it was a tricky day-one pitch. Consistent spin from earlier. Stokesy’s knock there, to get us to where we were, was fantastic. Come day three, day four – that could be a match-winning knock if that pitch gets harder to bat on.”It certainly could be match-winning. By the end of day one of this first Test, it had decidedly face-saving qualities, too, given India are only 127 behind with nine first-innings wickets to spare.Ben Stokes scatters the field with a sweep•Getty ImagesStokes arrived at 121 for 4, as England were in the midst of a spin cycle threatening to shrink their ambitions. Once Rohit Sharma abandoned seam from the eighth over, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin and Axar Patel combined to take six for 83 from the next 38 overs.Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root pushed back in a partnership of 61 before both fell either side of Stokes’s entrance. And while the dismissals within the top six at that point were far from reckless – Crawley not committing enough after coming down the track; Root top-edging to short fine leg playing the sweep shot that has served him very well; Ollie Pope simply out of touch – England were in trouble.It was the shirt-and-tie Stokes who arrived on the scene first – presentable for 17 off 52 deliveries before contorting his hands to reverse Jadeja through cover for his boundary. He repeated that shot twice more, without the grimaces that used to accompany it before his knee surgery in November.That third and final one came as the exclamation point in a 14-run over against Jadeja. The next time their paths crossed after tea, Stokes heaved back-to-back sixes down the ground to take 13, which led to Jadeja being taken out of the attack.If Stokes’ patience at the start was to cover for the mistakes of his teammates, the aggression was a reinforcement of the message to retain their aggression, even if it was a necessity given the dwindling partners to come. It probably went some way to humanising the likes of Jadeja, who subsequently returned an economy rate of more than four for the first time in a home innings. Even Mark Wood felt bold enough to cart Ashwin through the covers twice.Alas, England’s efforts were put into harsher context as Yashasvi Jaiswal’s blitz took India to 119 for 1. At one point, it looked like India’s next superstar might get the deficit down to double digits.Tom Hartley bore the brunt of that assault. A first day in Test cricket started well enough when he struck England’s first six, off Ashwin no less. It derailed quickly once his first delivery was sent into the stands at midwicket by Jaiswal.An English spinner being tasked with opening the bowling is hard enough, let alone one more au fait with the white ball playing in just his 21st first-class match. And there were times – three overs, 0 for 34; six overs, 0 for 51 – when you feared you were witnessing the end of a career before it had even begun.Yashasvi Jaiswal came out of the gates firing•Getty ImagesOn the field, however, there was an inordinate sense of calm. Beyond fielders fetching the odd long-hop or over-pitched delivery from the boundary, there was no sign of alarm from Stokes. Hartley had even got into a rhythm of handing his cap over to the umpire for the start of the next over when others might not have bothered to take it off, believing they would surely be dragged out of the attack.That rhythm eventually transferred to his bowling, sending it down a little slower, in turn finding some necessary dip. His two best deliveries – one spinning sharply past Rohit’s outside edge, the other pinning Shubman Gill on the front pad – were both rewarded with DRS reviews by his captain, and subsequently lost. The first was nowhere near but was pretty enough to watch again. The second, showing a projected path taking the ball over the stumps, was a cruel irony – the first time this high release point England banked on when picking him was clear for all to see.By the time his nine-over stint was done, all of Mark Wood, Jack Leach and Rehan Ahmed had been cycled through at the Pavilion End. Even while “Simon Kerrigan” trended on Twitter – another Lancashire left-arm orthodox spinner, who endured a torrid debut against Australia in 2013 and never recovered – Stokes kept faith.”On another day, captains might take you off after two overs and then you’re hiding away for the rest of the game,” said Duckett on Hartley’s spell. “But that’s Stokesy. He keeps bowling him and he nearly gets Shubman out right at the end. I’m not sure how that’s going over the stumps but I thought he came back really well.”Stokes’ methodology with the bat, selection and persisting with Hartley, and his own efforts to fix the errors, necessary and pragmatic. Finding a way to post something worthwhile on a challenging first-day pitch, ensuring the rangy spinner you took a punt on gets through this living nightmare, and even those practice pitches in Abu Dhabi are all examples of the underlying point of the McCullum-Stokes era – making the most out of what you’ve got.And what England have at this juncture, with the surface likely to get even tougher to negotiate over days two and three, is one foot in an already compelling contest.
