crew India Despite controlling the game for the first three days, England suffered a crushing 7-wicket defeat in the fifth Test at Edgbaston. The Indian bowlers failed to put pressure on Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow in the second innings as they stampeded their authority to help England chase down the target with ease.
It was India’s third defeat on foreign soil this year and interestingly, all three times they failed to defend the target after a stellar third innings performance with the bat.
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Team India is going through a transitional phase under the head coach Rahul Dravid, who has already worked with 5 captains in less than a year, which might not have allowed them to execute their plans properly Are.
However, another major area of concern for India is handling senior spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, who was not part of the XI for the Edgbaston tie. India decided to go with a combination of four fast bowlers with Ravindra Jadeja as the lone spinner, which did not go down well for them.
The same thing happened in the first four matches of the series last year. However, India’s batting order at that time was fairly stable, with Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul at the top, scoring runs for them.
Shardul Thakur, who was picked over Ashwin, got just 18 overs in the entire match, which shows that India don’t trust him much with the ball. And if India liked him for his batting abilities it backfired badly as Thakur scored 1 and 4 in the test match.
The Mumbaikar played a memorable innings in England last year when he scored 117 runs in two matches which included two half-centuries.
Talking about batting credentials, Ashwin himself has a good record against England with 970 runs in 19 matches at 37.30. He had scored against him last year as well.
The ace spinner also had a decent record with the ball at Edgbaston as he last played in a Test match in 2018 taking 7 wickets. He put on a show with the ball in both innings. 4/62 and 3/59. He took the crucial wickets of Alastair Cook, Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes and Stuart Broad in the first innings, while he took the better wickets of Cook, Root and Jennings in the second innings.
The 35-year-old could have come in handy in the second innings against England when the pitch was not giving much and the sun was out. Ravindra Jadeja, who was the lone spinner in the Indian XI, scored a brilliant century with the bat in the first innings, but he failed to create a problem with the ball and kept on keeping wickets.
Talking about Ravichandran Ashwin’s exclusion from the playing XI, head coach Rahul Dravid said: “It’s easy. Leaving a player like Ash (Ashwin) is not easy. But the wicket had a layer of grass on the first day. Then the wicket didn’t break as much as we expected.
India have tasted success with their four fast bowlers and one spinner strategy but at the same time, they have to find the right balance in the XI when they don’t have some crucial players in the squad. Looking at the current Indian side, they are weak in the batting department which has been exposed in the last few months.
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