A Pink Ball, 387 Total Runs and Two Days of Test Cricket: Who’s to Blame for the Farce in Ahmedabad?
As England captain Joe Root trudged up to the stumps to bowl what turned out to be the final ball of the third test match in Ahmedabad, he knew that a drove of questions awaited for him in the press box, few of which he could provide sound answers to. Indeed, Rohit Sharma galavanted forward and rocketed the part-time off-spinner’s delivery into the stands for the match-ending six and the 50,000 strong crowd who had roared their nation’s team on under these extraordinary circumstances, erupted once more.
The plan was simple. A five-day test match but one that would follow a day-night format using a pink ball that would remain playable during the evening portion of the match. This would allow terrestrial television in Britain that had been covering the series to organise their programming schedule for their time zone; the previous two tests had been broadcast in the early morning in the UK. Accordingly, Joe Root selected a number of his team’s tried-and-tested seam bowlers, the devastating triumvirate of Anderson, Broad and Archer who had assisted the visitors in the famous victory in the first test. Root did so under the assumption that pink ball would swing under the lights which sounds reasonable. How wrong he would turn out to be. England won the toss and elected to bat first, the newly called-upon Dom Sibley and Zak Crawley making up the initial pair. Sibley was the first to fall, caught off Ishant Sharma in the third over of the day with the score 2/1. His replacement, Jonny Bairstow began his forgettable test return by contributing nothing, caught LBW by Axar Patel (this would become a theme of the match) as Crawley continued to carve away. Double-centurion from Chennai, Joe Root, joined the fray and survived a (relatively) remarkable 37 deliveries before being caught on the pad by the other riotous spin bowler, Axar’s partner in crime, Ravichandran Ashwin. From there, it was a massacre. The remaining wickets fell one after the other as India’s crafty spinners dipped and dummied their way through the middle and lower orders eventually forcing their rivals back to the changing rooms with just 112 runs. It was India’s game to snatch from there but even the hosts, whose team selection suggested they knew the pitch better than the naive visitors, had no answers. Aside from Rohit Sharma’s 66, no Indian player scored more than 27. Their wickets fell for scrappy scores as Jack Leach, England’s only selected spinner for the match and Joe Root with his relative knowledge of the craft, skittled out the hosts for only 33 more runs then they had managed to score. By the first session of day two, England were returning to bat and, with no signs of the beach-like pitch holding out, it seemed that a result was nigh. England’s innings on this occasion was even worse, their highest score coming in the form of Ben Stokes’s 25 as Ashwin pulled rank again. The confusion and dire incompetence of the batsmen was evident in crude irony as glimmering bat after glimmering bat returned to the pavilion with little to no traces of pink on their faces. The ball was skidding and skittering. Each time the batsmen thought a delivery would turn and played the appropriate line, it would stay true, sending their stumps billowing behind them. By the time James Anderson took the crease with the score at 80/9 the wicket had turned to sand. As the ball grazed the surface, a cloud of dust would disperse into the air around the impact zone and eventually Anderson was caught behind by a full-pitched ball that bounced no higher than his knee. Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill saw to the remaining 49 runs and handed India the 10 wicket victory in this most incredulous match.
When the BBC released their match report, the comments section was pulsating with searing debate; fans of both teams were cursing the pitch, self-deprecating English supporters were ruing the dreadful batting and others citing the odd third-umpiring decisions as a factor in this farce. Yes, England’s batting was atrocious; the sight of Ben Foakes dancing up the wicket with poised bat as if playing in a county T20 game, just trying to figure out how to hit the ball was shocking. Yes, India were excellent; Axar Patel was a weapon and Ashwin cleaned up anywhere his partner had missed. And yes, it seemed as though the third umpire could have assessed England’s stumping appeal from a number of additional angles. However, it’s hard to get away from the condition of the pitch being the largest factor at play here. There is no excuse for England’s shocking display with the bat but when a part-time off-spinner like Joe Root who averages 47 emerges with figures of 5–8, it is not correct to say that this was a true competition between bat and ball. The ICC should deduct points from India’s total in the World Test Championship for providing a “test match pitch” that couldn’t last half the time it was asked to; this, however, is hard to see happening. And the biggest loser is, of course, test cricket. The floundering format has been losing appeal for some time despite the boost of the Headingly 2019 Ashes test and England’s South African tour in early 2020 and, with the hit-and-hope formats such as The Hundred looming, the future looks bleak. Channel 4 succeeded in prising test match cricket from the exclusive hands of Sky, something that the sport can be grateful for, only to leave them looking for the receipt as they were forced to broadcast this disgraceful travesty. It seems that to play the remaining test, England’s only chance to tie the series, on this venue should be a decision overturned but again that’s wishful thinking. One can only hope that those responsible for the poor state of the ground are punished and that an exciting, fair and good-natured fourth test can save the reputation of the series and test cricket as an artefact of sporting contest.
Max Pleasance
