EDGBASTON — On the eve of this final day, Marcus Trescothick, England’s batting coach, insisted “nothing is impossible” when talking up the possibility of chasing down 608 to win this second Test.
Of course, bettering the world-record Test chase by almost 200 runs was always an outlandish thought and so it proved.
England at least attempted to try and save the game but were unable to bat out the 80 overs required on a rain-reduced final day in Birmingham that would have denied India a series-levelling win.
I guess, as Ben Stokes has repeatedly told us over the past three years, the Bazballers really don’t do draws.
In 38 matches since Stokes and Brendon McCullum came together as captain and coach at the start of the 2022 summer just one match, the rain-reduced Ashes anti-climax in Manchester two years ago, has failed to yield a positive result.
Trescothick attempted to downplay that narrative on Saturday evening, admitting a draw here would have been a “good result”.
England, led by Jamie Smith’s counter-attacking 88 from 99 balls, batted like it too, showing discipline and fight to try and preserve their 1-0 series lead but were unable to hold out against a superb India attack led by Akash Deep on a pitch that finally woke up after four days of looking like the flattest patch of earth in the West Midlands.
Jamie Smith was the only England player to leave Edgbaston with credit (Photo: PA)Despite this glitch in the Bazball matrix, India still pulled off their biggest-ever overseas Test win in terms of runs, needing just 52.1 overs on this final day to finagle the seven wickets required for victory.
Coming just hours after Ozzy Osbourne played his last-ever gig down the road at Villa Park, this really was a Black Sabbath for England.
Despite the dispiriting nature of this defeat, it should be noted this is the first England have suffered in a Test with the series still live since they lost to Pakistan in Multan nine months ago.
They have also won 24 of the 38 matches played in the Bazball era, with this just the fifth defeat in 22 home Tests.
For every miraculous result such as the heist of Hyderabad in India early last year or chasing down 371 at Headingley last week, there have been horror shows worse than this under Stokes and McCullum. Two that immediately spring mind came last year – losing to India by 434 runs in Rajkot and to New Zealand by 423 in Hamilton.
This group will need picking up, though, ahead of Lord’s, with Ollie Pope perhaps the biggest candidate for an arm around the shoulder.
After his first-innings golden duck, Pope fell in the fourth over of day five when he was bowled by the irrepressible Deep for 24. Despite a century at Headingley last week, Pope’s average in the second innings of Tests stands at just 20 across 58 matches.
That drops to 15 when you take out his 196 at Hyderabad last year. It’s too soon to talk about Jacob Bethell coming in for Lord’s. But Pope’s record at the sharp end of matches just isn’t good enough.
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It won’t get any easier this week either with a buoyant India set to welcome back Jasprit Bumrah, the world’s No 1-ranked bowler, at Lord’s after he was rested here.
That decision and the call to make three changes from their defeat in the opening Test at Headingley came under much fire when the XI was announced on the first morning of this match.
Ultimately, though, it was Stokes’ choice to bowl first at the toss that shaped the narrative of this contest. It might be simplistic to say that one call cost England this match. Yet there’s no doubt it gave India a chance to gain a foothold in the series after the galling nature of their defeat in the first Test.
Shubman Gill, their fledgling captain, grabbed that opportunity with both hands, scoring 430 runs in Birmingham to make one of the best starts to a Test series in this country since the days of Donald Bradman.
It’s now up to England to wrest back that momentum at Lord’s, with the prospect of a completely refreshed bowling attack and the long-awaited return of Jofra Archer after four and a half years away from Test cricket promising another intriguing narrative shift in this action-packed series.
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