Beyond The Boundary

India and England were playing the second test match of the series starting from 2nd February 2024. England were looking strong as they already had 1-0 lead in the series after winning the closely contested first test match in Hyderabad. They fought their way back from being 190 runs down in the first innings riding on incredible performances from Ollie Pope and Tom Hartley. Their confidence would have been high before this test match and would have looked to continue the momentum in the second match as well. India on the other hand had many areas of concern in the first match like their batting, their fielding tactics. They needed to improve very quickly to bounce back in the series. But they were facing squad selection problems as well as KL Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja were unavailable for this match due to their injuries. Their problems were plenty and it would be interesting to see how they perform in this match.

As It Happened

India were playing without KL Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja in this match. Rajat Patidar made his test debut while Kuldeep Yadav was making a comeback in the test format. India also roped in Mukesh Kumar in place of Siraj for this match. On the other hand, Anderson was back in the XI for England in place of Mark Wood while Shoaib Bashir was making his debut in place of injured Jack Leach. The pitch of Visakhapatnam looked quite flat and should be great to bat on. India decided to bat first on this wonderful pitch on the morning of day one of the test match.

India had a cautious start to their first innings and the opening pair added 40 runs for the first wicket in 17 overs. But the debutant Shoaib Bashir got the big wicket of Indian captain Rohit Sharma. England kept on chipping with the wickets on one end while the youngster Yashasvi Jaiswal stood strongly at the other. All the Indian batsman were able to get to good starts but except Jaiswal, none of the others were able to convert their starts into a big score. Jaiswal held the Indian flag high alone and played a mammoth innings of 209 runs. He started his innings cautiously but as he grew into the innings, he gained more confidence and started playing more aggressively and freely. It was a mighty impressive innings for such a youngster who kept fighting a lone battle while he saw regular wickets falling at the other end. Second highest score for India after Jaiswal’s score was just 34 runs made by Shubman Gill. Such was the impact of this innings. India ended their innings at 396 runs and at that time it looked a below par score at a comparatively flat pitch.

England started their innings very well and scored 59 runs in their opening stand before Kuldeep Yadav got the wicket of Ben Duckett. The hero of the last match Ollie Pope joined Zak Crawley and took England’s score to 114-1 . Zak Crawley , who was looking very dangerous and threatened to take the match away from India very quickly, played one shot too many and got dismissed to Axar Patel. England were still in a strong position and were playing aggressively and looking at the pitch, looked like India is in for a long day. But it was all about Jasprit Bumrah from this point. He bowled an exceptional spell of bowling and English batters had no answer to his reverse swing. He was too good with the ball and swung the ball both ways. He finished with figures of 6-45 while Kuldeep took three wickets and England were dismissed for 253 runs. This spell of bowling by Jasprit Bumrah could very well prove to be the match turning point and India took a lead of 143 runs in the first innings thereby putting them in a very strong position.

India in the second innings followed pretty much the same line as in the first innings. This time it was Shubman Gill who scored big runs and scored a century. No other Indian batsman apart from Gill was able to cross the 50 run mark. It was a disappointing batting performance once again from team India who got bundled out for 255 on a decent batting wicket. For England it was Tom Hartley and Rehan Ahmed who did the bulk of the bowling and got 7 wickets among them. England were very good with the ball and in the field and India set them a target of 399 runs and England were not completely out of the game yet.

England started off pretty well in the second innings as well scoring 50 runs for the opening stand. They batted aggressively as they have done throughout the series. India kept chipping on with the wickets at one end while Zak Crawley once against stood tall at the other. He made 73 runs before getting dismissed to Kuldeep Yadav, owing to a fantastic review for leg before by team India. No other English batsman went on to make big runs. England were finally bowled out for 292 giving India a victory by 106 runs. Bumrah and Ashwin were the chief destroyer in this innings and took three wickets each. Ashwin is now just one away from 500 test wickets while Bumrah finished with 9 wickets in the match. A hard fought match between both the teams finally went to India’s favor and they levelled the series at 1-1. The series hangs in balance and the remaining matches should be high tension and closely fought matches as well.

What went wrong for India

Despite the victory for India, they should not be very happy with their performance. They have plenty of areas in their team to improve. They should not be very happy with their batting performance in both the innings as it was only one batsman in each innings who carried the batting. This was a good batting pitch and all the batsman got off to good starts in their innings but failed to capitalize on it. had it not been for Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill in first and second innings respectively, India might have ended at the losing side. Their batsman need to step up if they want to dominate and win further in the series. Coach Rahul Dravid said the following words in a press conference after team India’s victory:

“I think we left a few runs on the board in both the innings. In the first innings, 396 was under par. You win a toss, you have one guy who gets a double-hundred, you should be pushing 450-475 in these conditions”

They also need to focus more on their bowling as they relied heavily on Jasprit Bumrah in this match. Had it not been for Bumrah spell specially in the first innings India would definitely have been on the back foot throughout the match. They also need to find a second fast bowler to compliment Bumrah. Mukesh was completely ineffective during the whole match and even leaked a lot of runs. India haven’t announced their Squad for the remaining three Matches and uncertainty still lies on the return of Kohli, Rahul. Jadeja and Shami. It would be interesting to see which all these players can make a comeback in the next match. But India need to put up a better performance in the coming matches.