On Tuesday, 17 August 2021 at 04:51:29 UTC+10, FBInCIAnNSATerroristSlayer wrote:

Great Column.

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https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/eng-vs-ind-2nd-test-lords-5th-day-jasprit-bumrah-and-mohammed-shami-and-england-s-great-malfunction-1273654

Bumrah and Shami, endless mindgames, and England's great malfunction

It's difficult to recall a more self-destructive passage of play from England than on the fifth morning of the Lord's Test

Up in the media centre during the fifth-day lunch break, the great and
the good (as well as the significantly better than average) were all
united in their astonishment at the malfunction they were witnessing.
Phil Tufnell, for one, was struggling to recall a more self-destructive passage of play from an England team in his lifetime, and he had lived a fair few of them.

But thisrCa this was something extra special. Rarely has a match-winning position been squandered so wantonly, so pointedly, so brainlessly - as England laid down their arms in the five-day war of attrition, and chose instead to lose themselves in an irrelevant battle of wills. And, by the time Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami had backed up their extraordinary batting by picking off an opener apiece for ducks to leave England 1 for
2, it was shaping up as the most wholesale capitulation ever known.

Everything that transpired on the fifth morning stemmed from the ugly
but compelling events of the third evening. In the dying moments of that day, Bumrah's ten-ball over to England's No. 11 James Anderson, with
barely a delivery in his half of the pitch and his front foot pushing
the line in every sense, ignited the tinder-dry sensibilities of a
rivalry that has rarely needed an excuse to get rowdy in recent years.
After all, Anderson has been around long enough to remember the Trent
Bridge Test of 2007, when a row over jelly beans provided India with
just enough righteous indignation to make sure they had a series-sealing victory.
As the players left the field, the animosity was plain. A grinning
Bumrah, arms raised in a questioning fashion, as if to say to a livid Anderson: why shouldn't I stick it up your jumper? Virat Kohli,
inevitably, was in the thick of the action too, just as he would be on
the resumption of his own duel with Anderson on day four, during which
he informed England's greatest bowler that "this is not your f****** backyard". Words that, on the evidence of the bunfight that has
subsequently erupted, look set to enter the annals alongside Michael Clarke's promise to deliver Anderson a "broken f****** arm" in Brisbane
in 2013-14.
The point being, of course, that Anderson is old enough and ugly enough
to look after himself in the international arena. He did not need his
team to get emotional on his behalf. And, in fact, for the first 30
minutes of the final day's play, England's cricket was smart and
focussed. Anderson and Ollie Robinson played the long game with the
delayed new ball, challenging the dangerous Rishabh Pant to risk the
first move. And though he duly did so with a familiar gallop and thwack through the covers off Anderson, Robinson did for him four balls later,
with line, length, and a defensive prod to the keeper. It's amazing what
can happen when you bowl your best ball to any given batter.

By degrees, however, England lost their grip as soon as Pant had left
the stage. Instead of caving in as the analytics said they would,
India's lower-order - ostensibly one of the weakest in modern Test
history - signalled from the outset a refusal to play by their numbers.
It took a moment of genuine cunning from Robinson (probably England's
last example of thinking cricket in the innings) to confound a feisty
Ishant Sharma, a perfectly pitched knuckleball at 64mph, crashing into
his front pad like a microlight with engine failure. But thereafter,
their performance was entirely knuckleheaded.
Foremost among England's brain-fade was the use - or rather, misuse - of Mark Wood. Speaking to Sky Sports before the start of play, Wood
confirmed that he had heard a "bit of a crack" when landing heavily on
his right shoulder on the fourth evening, words that ought to have
filled England's management with untold dread, given how eviscerated
their pace-bowling stocks have become since the long-term injuries to
Jofra Archer and Olly Stone.
Wood did not take the field at all in the first half-hour, seemingly a
wise precaution, for there really was no need to change a plan that was still on course to deliver a victory target of less than 200. Instead,
no sooner had he stepped on the field of play, he was back into the
action - his "external" injury permitting him an immediate stint - and
then, five balls into his first over, he flung himself to intercept a
push from Shami and turned white with pain as he jarred the exact same shoulder. It should, by rights, have been the end of his day, there and then.
Instead, the arrival of Bumrah meant all bets were off. As if his
smiling visage wasn't enough to get under England's skin, his first act
was to ask Haseeb Hameed at short leg to kneel before him and tie up his dangling shoe-lace, potentially a coincidence, but an expertly inserted length of needle either way. The first ball he faced from Wood was a
bouncer - inevitably. So, too, the second. So, too, the third, as Bumrah wound into a hook, and found enough edge to get off the mark.
Robinson rumbled in for another over, but despite inducing a low edge
into the cordon off Shami, Joe Root was suddenly getting twitchy about
the size of India's lead. Bumrah sensed the mood, with a rasping
straight drive that deflected off the non-striker's stumps, and
suddenly, that was that. No more freebies, as England's best bowler of
the morning found himself limited to a solitary wide slip, and a phalanx
of boundary riders, essentially charged with keeping it tight while Wood knocked some blocks off.

It's worth at this point to remember exactly who England were dealing
with. The older members of the team might have had a dim and distant
memory of Shami's vague batting functionality, after he had made his
only previous Test half-century at Trent Bridge in 2014 - a deck so dead that the match is now best remembered for Alastair Cook's one and only
Test wicket.
But BumrahrCa now he was a proper batting bunny. Statistically, if not stylistically, he had long been the closest thing to an heir to the most feckless tailender of them all, New Zealand's Chris Martin, having made
a grand total of 18 runs in his first 19 innings, including a highest
score of 6, and an average of 1.80. All of a sudden, he's harvested 62
runs in three innings on this England tour - the same, shockingly, as
his captain, Kohli, and at a higher average too.
It was in Wood's third over that the mood of the match took its decisive turn. Prior to taking strike, Bumrah pulled out of his stance,
gesticulating at England's fielders, Root and Jos Buttler in particular,
as Shami and umpire Michael Gough became involved too. His response was
an angry hack, flat and fast through point as Kohli on the India balcony pumped his fist in approval and the lead marched into the 190s. And
though Wood responded with a crushing bouncer to the side of the helmet,
it was clear by this stage that such intimidation was pointless. Every
ball not aimed at the stumps was an invitation for India to burgle
another run, to bolster an already threatening stand, to exceed
expectations that were already far beyond what they had hoped their tail could be capable of.
Throughout it all, there was no sign of Anderson returning to restore
order, at least, not until Root, perhaps already sensing that the moment
was lost and that England's only hope was for him to switch back into batting mode, vanished into the dressing room, presumably to run a few options through the number-crunchers. "Give it to Jimmy, dammit!" was
the computer's unsurprising verdict, but Shami greeted his third ball
with a clip through midwicket that Dom Sibley could only dream of
playing, before Root himself dropped Bumrah at slip off Moeen Ali, a
clanger by any standards, but a head-in-hands moment that gave every
snapper in the ground their 1000-word picture.
And the remainder of England's fielding effort was a fever dream. Shami slammed Ali for four and six over cow corner to march to a 57-ball
fifty, and after the lunch break had passed in a will-they-won't-they of declaration speculation, the pair got another trio of boundaries in nine balls, either side of a five-minute hiatus while Shami waited, with
trousers at half-mast, for the delivery of a correct thigh pad. Again,
it could have been an accident, but like Bumrah's shoelace, there was no reason to think it wasn't another psychological ploy. For England had
been outmatched in the mindgames every step of the day. And as it turned out, their agonies were only just beginning.

Heh -heh.
--- SBBSecho 3.06-Win32
* Origin: SportNet Gateway Site (24:150/2)