IND vs ENG: England gives the world a solution to crack India’s spin code

The daring of Bazballers broke India’s staggeringly successful streak at home. England’s 28-run win in the first Test at Hyderabad was a triumph of the team’s unflinching faith in the system that has place for the fear of failure. On a spin-friendly pitch, the kind where many visiting teams have crumbled, England’s miracle-workers were not the usual suspects. Those who pulled off this wild heist for England were not the time-tested match winners Joe Root and Ben Stokes. England’s heroes were Tom Hartley, a debutant spinner, and Ollie Pope, a batsman with a modest Test record.

Left-arm spinner Hartley, 24, a T20 specialist with just 20 first-class games under his belt, ran through the Indian batting side with his aggressive straight-on-the-stumps line to finish with figures of 7/62 in the second innings. This was after Pope, a nervous wreck in the first innings, had crafted an innings of 196 that had a range of courageous and unconventional strokes. Both in their mid-20s, Hartley and Pope seemed strongly indoctrinated to the audacious brand of cricket that England has adopted under the leadership of coach Brendon McCullum and captain Stokes.

Making everyone in the dressing room believe that nothing is impossible has been the essence of Bazball. Beating India on a turner is the most feared task in the game. It involves multiple layers of competence. First, the visiting team needs to beat the batsmen, then the spinners, and lastly the pitch. Stokes’ men did it all in the space of two magnificent days.

Just absolute scenes 😍

🇮🇳 #INDvENG 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 | #EnglandCricket pic.twitter.com/qamsNLn96z

— England Cricket (@englandcricket) January 28, 2024

The England captain would go on to call the Hyderabad triumph as “100 percent our greatest triumph”. He would go on to applaud the effort of Hartley and Pope. “Tom (Hartley) came into the squad for the first time. I was willing to give him longer spells. We completely back people who we have selected. Pope’s 190 on such a wicket … that’s the greatest innings ever played in the subcontinent by an English batter. I don’t fear failure, I try to encourage whoever is in the squad,” he would say. Home skipper Rohit Sharma seemed to be struggling for answers. “Hard to pinpoint where it went wrong. With a lead of 190 we were in control …”

On a strip where no other batsman reached three figures, Pope did it with a Kevin Pietersen-like audacity, with a streak of courage that belied his adolescent-like face. Pope, who had a horror India tour in 2021 where his highest score was 34, hasn’t made many technical changes in his batting from the last time, but there is a visible change in approach. The turning ball did not spook him, or his colleagues. If the nerves jangled, they concealed it with their cold and mean eyes. They stood firm in their convictions to attack their way out of trouble.

Hyderabad: England’s Ollie Pope plays a shot on the third day of the first cricket test match between India and England, at Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium, in Hyderabad, Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024. (PTI Photo/Shailendra Bhojak)

England had conceded a 190-run lead in the first innings but there was no reversal, or even revision, of approach. At no point in the game did they embrace anything against their system. If they were to go down, they would rather go down attacking. It was always about being cavalier and not round-headed.

This fearless approach dazed India’s spinners. They are more accustomed to watching fear flickering in the corners of their opponents’ eyes. They froze, in the onslaught of fours. Pope’s game was risk-fraught but no stroke of his was essayed tentatively. Every stroke had a purpose and not like a blind shot in the dark.

To the naked eye, England’s methods would seem reckless. On the contrary, it’s a careful dismembering of a stellar spin-cast of Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel. Stokes and his men have shown the world that the Indian conditions can be cracked by being brave, riding the luck and hitting the spinners out of the attack.

England batsmen spent hours training their instincts and impulses to new forms, shaping a new set of muscle memory. Hence, Pope and Ben Duckett essay the reverse scoop as sweetly and naturally as they would a cover drive. Bazball is not a flight of fancy but a practised art.

Hartley in the second innings discovered his rhythm and ran through India’s in-transition top-order. In a way, he was interrogating India’s trust in their youngsters, making the spectators wonder whether Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane were prematurely thrust into the cold.

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With Virat Kohli deciding to sit out from the first two Tests, the batting order wore an unstable look. Opener Yashasvi Jaiswal, 22, is untested against high-class bowling; Shubman Gill, 24, looks vulnerable against spin and needs domestic rehab, and Shreyas Iyer has been woefully inconsistent. With the firepower of Rishab Pant missing, India were over-dependent on Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul.

More than any of these flaws, what would really worry India is that their most successful tool of domination has been dismantled. India has lost Tests at home in the past but this one was different. At Hyderabad, India seem to have lost their aura of invincibility at home. They would enter the next Test with the awareness that they could be beaten on turners and now they need to devise their own system to beat the English system.

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