Jonny Bairstow could be forgiven for thinking he was playing the World Cup semifinal on an Indian pitch rather than at the Providence Stadium in Guyana. With the ball turning sharply, staying low, and a couple of slip fielders stationed close to the bat, the conditions resembled those he faced in the five-Test series in India earlier this year. A forward short leg and a silly point were the only elements missing from the England innings. R Ashwin wasn’t there too, but the Indian spinners still went on a rampage and called the shots.
Credit goes to skipper Rohit Sharma for his keen understanding of the conditions and his ability to anticipate the batters’ moves like a Grandmaster in chess. Although he didn’t have to decide whether to bat or bowl after the toss, he was clear in his preference that he would have batted first if he had won the toss. When his counterpart chose to field, the Indian captain had no complaints. He was eager to take advantage of a surface that was only going to deteriorate as the game progressed.
The first signs of serious demons beneath the pitch emerged when Rohit himself got out. He was undone by a turning ball that stayed abysmally low. On a normal pitch, his wild swing would have sent the ball soaring over the mid-wicket fence. It was clear then that the track was a rank turner. Before his dismissal, the Indian skipper had reached a half-century, his second in a row against a high-quality opposition.
Rohit’s exceptional batsmanship was evident in his substantial contribution to the team’s total under challenging conditions. Suryakumar Yadav’s quality batting (47 off 36 deliveries) provided momentum to India’s innings which was further propelled by quickfire cameos from Hardik Pandya (23 off 13 balls), Ravindra Jadeja (17 not out off 9 balls), and Axar Patel (10 off 6 balls). India’s total of 171 for seven was 20 runs above par on that pitch. The Indian spinners simply needed to bowl in the right areas to capitalise on the conditions. A 68-run win was a surprise but an India win was always on cards once they had scored as many as 171.
That was the basis of the discussion during the innings break in the Indian change room. “We talked in the dressing room that it’s not an easy wicket. We could have easily defended at 170. It was a very good score. The way the wicket was behaving, when we spoke to Rohit, he said it was very difficult to hit a big shot because the odd ball is spinning and the odd ball is also staying down, skidding on. So that was our thought that 150-160 is a very good score, we can defend it. So, when we made 170, we knew that we made 10-15 runs more and the plan was the same,” Axar Patel, declared player of the match, said.
What he did not say but definitely meant was that it was not a 103-run wicket either, but a member of the Indian coaching staff would later say that the team was surprised by the meek surrender of the defending champions. But the imaginative bowling changes of Rohit here cannot be overstated. Every option Rohit took was aimed at creating more pressure on the batters. And the best thing about that was that they all appeared to be based on the game infront of him rather than any set formula decided in the dressing room.
He knew the match-ups, but stayed in sync with the flow of the game and took decisions as the game unfolded. He pushed Axar to bowl two overs in the PowerPlay and kept the pressure on by continuing to bowl spin all through. Hardik Pandya, the third pacer, was introduced to bowl only in the 15th over, when the match was well and truly over. England were already eight down. At one stage, there were two close-in slip fielders. Pressure from the Indian captain was unrelenting on the England side.
With that much turn in the pitch, Kuldeep Yadav (3/19) just had to stick to his basics – that is to keep the ball within the stumps – and he did really well to deliver when it mattered. Axar was also similar in keeping the ball within the stumps and bowling back of a length which ensured his ball kept low pretty much throughout his spell. He was simply using the conditions to his advantage.
With the ball turning so sharply, taking on the spinners aggressively by coming down the wicket was not feasible. Batters resorted to the sweep and reverse sweep, which yielded varying degrees of success for both the teams. However, it was a crucial reverse sweep attempt by Jos Buttler, after a promising start, that triggered the England collapse. He edged Axar’s delivery to the wicketkeeper, marking a turning point as England’s batters, clearly ill equipped to handle the Indian spinners, came and went, without making much of an impression.
“I think everyone knew what to expect from this wicket. I think traditionally the bounce is low. And yeah, I thought India played really well and they played the conditions better than we did. I think we were outplayed by India. They fully deserved the victory. So, yeah, I thought they had an above-par score. I was hoping to restrict them to 145 – 150 probably on that pitch. It was always going to be a tough chase from there,” Jos Buttler said.
There’s no denying that the pitches in this World Cup, both in the US and the Caribbean, have generally been below par, where only high-quality batting could make a serious difference. This is where India’s exceptional batsmanship came to the fore. Axar & Co efficiently bundled the opposition out for 103, but achieving an above-par score required top-notch batting skills, which India, led by their irrepressible skipper Rohit, brought to the second-biggest game of the tournament.
