Remember the date: Monday, September 30 could be the day cricket changed for ever. All it took was 34.4 overs on the fourth afternoon of the second Test at Kanpur, in which time India scored 285 for nine against Bangladesh, unleashing the full shock and awe of their batting arsenal.
At 8.22 runs an over, it was Test cricket’s quickest innings (minimum: 50 balls), and comes as England fly to Pakistan – the scene, two years ago, of their own epoch-defining 506 for four on the first day of the series at Rawalpindi.
The runs that day came at a rate of 6.75, which England upped to 7.36 in their second innings as the Bazball revolution achieved its first overseas scalp. Afterwards, we could hardly move at the back of the media centre for all the England batsmen signing their name on the honours board.
The breakneck pace of Test cricket under Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes has invited plenty of mockery, not least from Indian fans on Twitter when England were losing 4–1 to Rohit Sharma’s side earlier this year. Many Australian fans, apparently forgetting that Manchester rain saved them from becoming only the second team in Test history to lose a series from 2–0 up, still struggle to get their heads round it too.
And yet here we are, with India audaciously choosing to chase victory in a game where the weather had limited play on the first three days to 35 overs, and Bangladesh presumably imagining they would escape with a dull draw. On Tuesday morning, India completed a seven-wicket win, reaping the rewards of their boldness.
Monday 30 September should become a watershed date in the contemporary tale of Indian Test cricket
The side claimed the two-match series in thrilling circumstances rather than settling for a tie
England underwent a similar resurgence in Pakistan in 2022 in the first Test at Rawalpindi
It was thrilling stuff. Yashasvi Jaiswal hit three successive fours in the first over, while Rohit whacked his first two balls for six. India’s 50 came up from three overs, breaking England’s record. Even the out-of-form Virat Kohli enjoyed the freedom, hitting 47 in 35 balls. India’s 100 came up in 10.1 overs, their 150 in 18.2, their 200 in 24.2 – all Test records. Bangladesh’s opening bowlers Hasan Mahmud and Khaled Ahmed went for 109 in 10 overs.
‘Carnage’ barely does it justice, and the only surprise was that Rishabh Pant, the explosive wicketkeeper who until Jaiswal came along had looked like India’s lone Bazballer, had to settle for nine off 11 deliveries.
It is here that we have to tread carefully. Earlier this year in Rajkot, Ben Duckett was tarred and feathered by the Twitterati after suggesting that Jaiswal’s explosive batting had been learned by watching England. Duckett told Mail Sport in August that he had intended his comments as a compliment, but the damage was done: if you suggest India are copying England, don’t expect it to end well.
But it’s hardly a stretch to suggest that, pre-Bazball, India might have settled for the draw that would have ensured a series win and protected their astonishing home record. In the current climate, though, their derring-do was simply another staging-post in Test cricket’s general acceleration.
‘Carnage’ hardly does the performance justice, with Yashasvi Jaiswal (pictured) one of the many who made hay in Kanpur
Even the out-of-form Virat Kohli grasped the nettle, gaining 47 off 35 balls in Uttar Pradesh
The idea that England might have had something to do with creating the environment in which eight an over in a Test innings is possible may enrage Indian fans, though it doesn’t take much to do that.
But you would have to be hopelessly one-eyed or fervently anti-English – and there are plenty of both in cricket fandom – to deny the role England have played in shifting the dial. As if to prove the point, Indian fans are calling their team’s approach ‘Gamball’, after the new head coach Gautam Gambhir.
So why were Monday’s events more significant than anything England have done over the past two years? Because, well, India.
England invented 20-over cricket in 2003, but it wasn’t until India won the first World T20 in South Africa four years later that they awoke to the format’s potential. The IPL followed in 2008, and the rest was history.
The same thing had happened in 1983, when India – until then a Test-mad nation – stunned West Indies at Lord’s to win the one-day World Cup, and suddenly decided they quite liked limited-overs cricket.
Head coach Gautam Gambhir (pictured) has seen his name capitalised upon, much like Brendon McCullum’s was
And if India decide they like something, cricket’s tectonic plates grind into gear. To witness the excitement of Indian fans on Twitter as their team tore up the records suggested they do like this, very much.
Until now, it’s been said that Kohli’s fondness for Test cricket has helped cement its popularity in India, for which the rest of the world can be grateful. But if a country whose head has been turned by the IPL can derive the same excitement from Test matches, it could act as the format’s best insurance policy yet.
Other teams have shown signs of picking up the baton. Last year, Pakistan – stung by losing 3–0 at home to England in December 2022 – instituted a policy in practice games whereby batsmen would lose their wicket if they played out more than two dot balls in a row. Soon after, they scored at four an over to win a series in Sri Lanka, and called their approach ‘the Pakistan Way’.
At The Oval recently, the Sri Lankans themselves became the first team to score at a quicker rate than McCullum’s England across a match.
India have not, on the whole, felt the need to follow suit. Before Kanpur, their run-rate in the Bazball era was 3.53, one run an over slower than England, and fractionally behind Sri Lanka and Australia. Even Bangladesh had managed 3.52.
India will not want to think that they are merely borrowing from the English as they develop their feisty new attitude
But imagine if Kanpur opens India’s eyes to the possibilities. Imagine if their army of attacking batsmen conclude that the only way to get into the Test team is to show off their six-hitting prowess. Imagine if India, under Gambhir, decide never to go back to the conservatism of his predecessor, Rahul Dravid.
Because if all that happens, if Kanpur becomes the moment India woke up, even Bazball may begin to look off the pace. And then Test cricket will enter a whole new paradigm altogether.
Until now, the relationship between the words ‘Ponzi scheme’ and ‘English cricket’ had been limited to the ECB’s humiliating involvement with the Texan fraudster Allen Stanford. Presumably it’s why Lalit Modi, once the impresario of the IPL, reached for the phrase when describing the Hundred and the ECB’s attempts to lure the private investment they argue will bankroll the English game for years to come.
Now, Modi is – among other things – a magnificent self-publicist, and ECB chief executive Richard Gould insisted he did not ‘recognise’ his comments. But it’s fair to ask whether Modi has a point when he describes the financial valuations provided by Raine Group, the American bank who are handling the sale of the Hundred, as ‘disconnected from reality’. Will, for example, TV rights from the North American market really rise from £200,000 a year to £5 million by 2027? Perhaps. But it all sounds a bit Dragons’ Den.
Lalit Modi (left) described the search for private investors in The Hundred as a ‘Ponzi scheme’ – much to the disagreement of ECB chief executive Richard Gould (right)
Kamindu Mendis pulled off a showing redolent of the great Don Bradman against New Zealand
Cricket’s best-known statistic is Don Bradman’s Test average of 99.94, which is why Kamindu Mendis is getting everyone so excited. After Sri Lanka wallopped New Zealand by an innings at Galle last week, Mendis took his own average to 91.27, having needed only 13 innings – the same as Bradman – to reach 1,000 Test runs. He has five hundreds from 13 knocks, including a superb 113 at Old Trafford last month, and has batted for nine of those innings at No 7 or below, until being promoted two places against the New Zealanders. Oh, and he can bowl with both arms. Sometimes, life feels unfair.
Sunil Gavaskar is one of Test cricket’s great openers, but he has turned into a spectacularly grumpy old man. His latest grumble came as India took on Bangladesh in Kanpur, where he somehow ended up getting stuck into the English media for being ‘moaners’ and ‘cry babies’ about Indian pitches. He seems intent on joining the club.
