- England slumped to a heavy defeat in the second Test against India
- The five Test series is all square at one apiece ahead of the third Test at Lord’s
The most glaring thing about this Test was that the India bowling attack managed to get so much more out of the Edgbaston pitch than England’s did.
Even though it was still pretty dead on day five, the Indian seamers were getting the ball to move about off the cracks and dryness in the surface.
Some of that was down to the toss. A pitch naturally dries out over the course of a game and is therefore at its driest at the end of the match. India’s bowlers were brought up having to cope with those conditions.
I don’t think it was the pitch England wanted. It was much more akin to what Indian players are used to.
England’s bowlers were hitting the deck hard but a lot of pace was being taken off the ball, whereas India thrived with their skiddier trajectories.
They needed the kind of mode of attack that Akash Deep and Mohammed Siraj provided, where kissing the surface got more out of it.
England want flat pitches, but they also want pitches with some pace in them, like Headingley, or even something with a bit of grass on it. But this was not one they enjoyed playing on.
As I say, it is a concern how little England got out of the pitch compared to the Indians, to the point that when India were batting, you could argue it looked flat. But it did not look so flat when England batted.
It is a two-pronged situation, though. Did their top-order batters play loose shots like Zak Crawley, who did so in both innings? No.
Look at Shubman Gill as an example. He bats for a very long time. There’s nothing loose in his game.
Even in the fourth innings, when England effectively had to bat for 96 overs to save the game, they could have done a bit more.
It was not a minefield at the end and it will be disappointing to Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum that they couldn’t do so.
In one way, this big defeat was actually a by-product of them playing on flat pitches and scoring runs so quickly. If you’re going to score quickly, but only bat for 90 overs, you’re going to be back in the field very soon.
They bowled on each of the first four days, played back-to-back matches, and bowling first at Headingley and then here has taken it out of them.
It means they are now carrying tired bodies — the bowlers looked dead on their feet here — whereas India injected some new blood into their team in the form of Deep, in particular.
England are scoring runs but getting out regularly, so combine all of that with two Tests in two weeks and they now need to rejig their bowling attack for this week’s third Test at Lord’s.
They need fresh legs, but the problem is that those fresh legs are possibly going to be in the form of two people coming back from injury, Jofra Archer and Gus Atkinson.
By contrast, things have worked out pretty well for India and the way they planned things.
There will be some people nodding contentedly in the away dressing room, saying ‘we got it right’ by leaving out their attacking spearhead Jasprit Bumrah in Birmingham.
He will now head to London fresh after a fortnight’s rest for the third match of the series, starting on Thursday.
