India Cricket Needs To Change The Record At Edgbaston Test

India did a lot of things right against England at Headingley, but it couldn’t defend 370. The second Test at Edgbaston will draw a clearer picture of how that has rattled their sense of wellbeing. The Big Daddys of the team, Rohit and Kohli, have gone and Gautam Gambhir’s side is desperately searching for combinations that work with only one win from the last nine Tests.

Shubman Gill must have had a sense of foreboding because he played in Birmingham three years ago when Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow chased 378 for the loss of only three wickets. England win unwinnable Tests with Bazball. India had no Plan B - other than Bumrah - once Ben Stokes’s rock stars put their foot down.

India opened the door for Bazball to alight rather than being out of sight. When he was England skipper, Graham Gooch’s mantra was to bat teams out of the game. It didn’t make any sense for England to coast home to such a huge total and that is the kind of entertainment that the Stokes and Brendon McCullum roadshow wants to create. Look at us. Look at the legacy.

The portents at Birmingham are not good given that in eight contests between the two nations, England have won seven and drawn one. All the worrying is for the tourists to do which is a strange thing to contemplate when the top order scored five centuries in the first Test. Rishabh Pant was the acrobatic star of the show with two hundreds in his own inimitable style, punctuated with a new air of responsibility and raucous windmill hitting. Gill finally released the shackles of overseas torment to stamp authority on his debut as captain.

The problems lay elsewhere. Karun Nair made an ordinary comeback after seven years in the wilderness. Melbourne centurion Nitish Kumar Reddy could add more color and character. Sai Sudharsan shaped well for 30 but his dismissals were soft.

MORE FOR YOU

India’s lower batting order stunk the place out in layman’s terms - a crucial difference between winning and losing. Numbers 8 to 11 contributed nine runs in the match which was reminiscent of some of the tailender efforts of Ed Giddins, Phil Tufnell, Alan Mullally and Andy Caddick at the 1999 Oval Test against New Zealand. The Guardian called that gruesome English quartet “probably the worst lower order ever picked by a Test side.”

India have some big decisions to make that are easy on the face of it. Kuldeep Yadav would surely have been more of a wicket-taking threat with Ravi Jadeja struggling to create any pressure in the fourth innings on a pitch that was offering assistance.

The ‘divorce’ created from the retirement of his fellow Ravi, R Ashwin, must hurt the team deeper than first thought. Sundar Washington can hold a bat and his right-arm spin is more than useful.

Rohit and Kohli weren’t needed for their runs a week ago, but the catching was appalling with eight chances going down. Yashasvi Jaiswal messed up four opportunities. He scored 101 but then switched off. Test matches are not won on the first day.

Jasprit Bumrah had to carry the backpack again for the Indians with Prasidh Krishna going at six an over. Krishna’s place must be under threat from the left-arm pace of Arshdeep Singh that will at least create a different look for England’s set batsmen. If Bumrah doesn’t play because of the workload issues that he has been managing since a back injury then one wonders how the unit will hunt down 20 wickets.

England are unchanged and there really is nothing to change. Zak Crawley got much-needed runs and Ben Duckett looks ready to dial in for the Ashes. Joe Root steadied the ship into port and Ben Stokes’s bowling was a revelation, his batting less so. Even Jofra Archer has got the go ahead to hang out with the squad just in case there’s a chance to have a shot at Test cricket for the first time in four years later in the summer.

In 2011, England thrashed India 4-0 to replace them at the top of the ICC rankings. They even received the famous mace as best Test team on the planet. It’s a reminder to Stokes that with Australia struggling and India in transition, the current World Test table is worth topping.

Indian cricket was so relieved at winning those two ICC white-ball trophies in the last 12 months that the red-ball squad has gone AWOL. Something has to change.