England’s daring brand of cricket broke India’s staggeringly successful streak at home on Sunday. The 28-run win in the first game of the five-Test series at Hyderabad was a triumph of coach Brendon McCullum and captain Ben Stokes’s unflinching faith in their brave system that has no place for the fear of failure.
Sunday’s defeat was only India’s fourth Test loss at home since 2013, but its scars will linger long. It was the first time India lost a Test at home despite securing a 100-plus lead, and its second defeat ever, anywhere, after leading by 190 runs.
Also, only once before has India lost at home despite scoring more (449 against Pakistan in Bengaluru in 2005), making Sunday’s a statement-making victory for England.
On a spin-friendly pitch, the kind where many visiting teams have crumbled, England’s miracle-workers were not the usual suspects, its time-tested match winners Joe Root and Ben Stokes. Those responsible for India’s loss were Tom Hartley, a debutant left-arm spinner, and Ollie Pope, a batsman with a modest Test record.
Hartley, 24, a T20 specialist with just 20 first-class games under his belt, ran through the Indian batting side with his aggressive straight-on-the-stumps line to finish with figures of 7/62 in the second innings. This was after 26-year-old Pope, a nervous wreck in the first innings, crafted a 196-run innings that had a range of courageous and unconventional strokes. Pope’s score was the highest by an English batsman in the second innings of a Test in India.
Among the team’s young crop, Hartley and Pope seemed strongly indoctrinated to the audaciously entertaining style of cricket that the world knows as Bazball (McCullum is ‘Baz’ to his friends and teammates).
Making everyone in the dressing room believe that nothing is impossible has been the essence of Bazball. Like beating India on a turner, one of the most feared tasks in the game. It involves multiple layers of competence: First, the visiting team needs to beat the batsmen, then the spinners, then the reverse-swinging virtuosos, and lastly the pitch. Stokes’ men did it all. In just two magnificent days.
The England captain called the Hyderabad triumph as “100 percent our greatest triumph”. He also applauded the effort of Hartley and Pope.
“Tom (Hartley) came into the squad for the first time. I was willing to give him longer spells. We completely back people who we have selected. Pope’s 190 on such a wicket … that’s the greatest innings ever played in the subcontinent by an English batter. I don’t fear failure, I try to encourage whoever is in the squad,” Stokes said.
Home skipper Rohit Sharma seemed to be struggling for answers. “Hard to pinpoint where it went wrong. With a lead of 190 we were in control …” he said.
On a pitch where no other batsman reached three figures, Pope showed Kevin Pietersen-like audacity and courage that belied his adolescent look. Since the horrors of the 2021 India tour, where his highest score was 34, the middle-order batsman hadn’t made many technical changes but there was a visible change in approach. The turning ball did not spook him, or his colleagues. If the nerves jangled, they concealed it with their cold eyes. They stood firm in their convictions to attack their way out of trouble.
Even when England conceded a 190-run lead in the first innings, there was no reversal, or even revision, in approach. At no point in the game did they embrace anything against their Bazball system. If they were to go down, they would rather go down attacking. After all, it was about being cavalier and not round-headed.
On the face of it, England’s methods would seem reckless. But it was a careful dismembering of a stellar spin-cast of Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel, with Stokes and his men showing the world the Indian conditions can be cracked by being brave, riding the luck and hitting the spinners out of the attack.
The England bowlers, too, played a big role. Hartley in the second innings discovered his rhythm and ran through India’s in-transition top-order. In a way, he was interrogating India’s trust in their youngsters, making the spectators wonder whether Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane were prematurely thrust into the cold.
With Virat Kohli deciding to sit out from the first two Tests, the batting order wore an unstable look. Opener Yashasvi Jaiswal, 22, is untested against high-class bowling; Shubman Gill, 24, looks vulnerable against spin and needs domestic rehab, and Shreyas Iyer has been woefully inconsistent. With the firepower of Rishab Pant missing, India were over-dependent on Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul.
More than any of these flaws, what would really worry India is that their most successful tool of domination has been dismantled. India has lost Tests at home in the past but this one was different. At Hyderabad, they seem to have lost their aura of invincibility at home.
For the next Test — at Vizag from February 2 to 6 — India would enter the pitch with the awareness that they could be beaten on turners and that they need to devise their own system to beat the English one.
Stay updated with the latest sports news across Cricket, Football, Chess, and more. Catch all the action with real-time live cricket score updates and in-depth coverage of ongoing matches.
