It was for a day like this India has been overloading its playing eleven with batsmen. The extra batsman embedded in the middle order came in handy as India endured their first real English day of the tour in the final Test of this close to two-month long tour.
Karun Nair’s inclusion, in place of all-rounder Shardul Thakur, increased India’s bat-count to 8 and also helped India’s to reach 204/6, a respectable score in these challenging conditions. The day’s top scorer was Nair on an unbeaten 52 and giving him company was the ever-reliable Washington Sundar on 19.
Batting at No.5, Nair played an exceptional knock as he countered the swing and seam movement. He scored his runs in the final session that was played under lights and cloud cover. He would leave the length ball and wait for the short ones to punch to cover.
There was also a Nair straight drive that went onto hurt England the most. Chasing the ball, Chris Woakes tumbled across the fence and hurt his shoulder. Him using his sweater as a harness to his shoulder wasn’t a great sight. It looks unlikely that the England all-rounder would take any part in this Test. Thus, England had a chance to nose ahead in the Test but they failed.
The Test had started with Oval exhibiting everything that touring batsmen from the subcontinent hate. The pitching had green shoots and life, there were intermittent showers and England had drafted for this Test three tall grizzly pacer in Gus Atkinson, Josh Tongue and Jamie Overton to bowl with senior pace pro Chris Woakes.
This was England’s chance to engineer a collapse, blow away the Indian batting line-up. Maybe, carried away by the easily available swing and seam moment, they couldn’t find their range and target.
Erratic England
In the first session, an erratic England bowling attack failed to take advantage of the murkiness in the air. The first three wickets to fall had hardly anything to do with the conditions. Yashasvi Jaiswal got out to an in-coming ball, the kind a new ball bowler bowls all the time, regardless of the temperature and moisture in the air. KL Rahul tried cutting a ball that was too close to him and was out played on. And when Shubman was run out, paying for his misjudgment of a quick single, India were 83/3. England would have smelled a collapse but their bowlers weren’t that disciplined.
Oval today came to know that there are two ways of bowling on a pace-friendly track. One is the tried and tested Glenn McGrath method – pitching the ball on the handkerchief size square outside the off-stump and making the ball move both ways. Then there is the Josh Tongue ‘don’t try it home’ formula.
India’s Karun Nair walks after being caught during day four of the second cricket test match between England and India at Edgbaston in Birmingham, England, Saturday, July 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)
This is how it is done. Spray the ball all over the pitch, bowl a few atrocious wides and don’t allow a batsman to get into a rhythm. And in between come up sharp in-coming balls. In a spell where he toggled between sublime and ridiculous, Overton got the crucial wickets of the best batsman on the day, Sai Sudharsan, and the hardest to dismiss batsman in this series, Ravindra Jadeja. Both were foxed by the ‘blow cold for all day, blow hot for a few balls’ Tongue. Jadeja and Sudharsan looked good till they got those unplayable balls.
All through his 108-balls stay, Sudharsan showed a tight technique when dealing with the moving ball. Against the right-handed English pacers, bowling round the wicket to the left-hander, he had a nice tight plan.
Devising his method
Standing on the middle-leg stump, he took a tiny stride forward, moved his right-leg forward and across and placed it exactly in line with the off-stump. That front-foot was his marker, the gatekeeper for the downswing of the bat. Sudharsan would hide his bat behind the right-leg and react to the trajectory of the ball. In case the ball was headed towards his front foot, which also meant in line of the stumps, the bat instinctually came down to meet the ball.
If the ball was outside the line of the right-leg, planted in the line of the off-stump, Sudharsan would withdraw his bat gracefully, like the swing of a pendulum. The foot planted on the off-stump has its pitfalls. Batsmen tend to overbalance when dealing with full balls. This happened to Sudharsan once as he stumbled over while digging out a yorker by Overton.
This off-side commitment also can result in the batsman edging the balls to leg-slip. England have got him out in that fashion in this series and they continue to hope he keeps repeating the mistake. At Oval, Sudharsan was out edging a ball to the slips. His ‘front foot’ had perfectly guided him to decide which ball to play or leave but the error was committed in dealing with the ball that came in sharply. Sudharsan was watchful, he had his head over the ball but the conditions were making the ball fly at speed that it was not easy to keep middling the ball at Oval on Day 1.
Jadeja too employs the same method as Sudharsan. He too withdrew his bat from the line of the ball with the same grace. He also got out in a similar fashion. He too was judging the line of the ball expertly and also not missing a chance to score runs.
When Overton bowled a short ball, he ramped it over the slips to score a boundary. But the very next ball, he would get an unplayable ball. Jadeja couldn’t have left the ball since the nip-backer was headed to the stumps. However, once again it was difficult to ride the bounce and tap it to the feet. The ball rose sharply and touched the shoulder of the bat and landed in the hands of the wicket-keeper.
Jadeja was going out and walking in was Washington – one Manchester hero being replaced by another. He and Nair forged an unbeaten 51-run partnership and take India past 200. India were going from a respectable total to a challenging one. This unputdownable team keeps finding new heroes and bouncing back.
India's Karun Nair celebrates after scoring fifty runs during the first day of the fifth cricket test match between England and India at The Kia Oval in London, Thursday, July 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) 
India’s Karun Nair walks after being caught during day four of the second cricket test match between England and India at Edgbaston in Birmingham, England, Saturday, July 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)
Share
