England set for gripping run-chase in first Test against India

Headingley, you’re spoiling us. After a day high on skill and drama, plus a costly dropped catch and some slapstick farce, the equation going into the final morning is simple: England need 371 to pull off the kind of madcap victory on which Ben Stokes and his team pride themselves.

The record books suggest it ought to be beyond them. Only once before, against India at Edgbaston in 2022, have they successfully chased more in the fourth innings. But England believe record books exist to be ripped up, and only today’s iffy forecast will slow their headlong attempt to go one up in this five-match series.

By stumps, Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett had knocked 21 off the target, and repelled the first three-over burst of Jasprit Bumrah — in itself, a minor victory.

That they have even a glimmer of a chance was thanks to India’s second collapse of the game, after chalk-and-cheese centuries from the studious KL Rahul and the outrageous Rishabh Pant appeared to have shut the door on English hopes.

And for the second time it was Josh Tongue who feasted on the Indian tail, producing a triple-wicket maiden as the last six fell for 31. On Saturday, it had been seven for 41, with Tongue hoovering up four in 17 balls. If India lose after being 430 for three in their first innings and 333 for four in their second, the inquest will last all the way to next week’s second Test at Edgbaston.

In England’s favour is the trueness of a Headingley surface that has offered occasional bounce and turn, but nothing to suggest it will morph into a minefield. In the last decade, no venue in the world boasts a higher fourth-innings batting average than its 43.79. Stokes’s decision to insert India on the first morning was made with precisely this sort of number in mind.

On the other side of the balance sheet lies Bumrah, the freakish genius who has operated on a different plane from any bowler on either side. If there is any devil in the pitch, he will find it; even if there isn’t, England will be wary.

The fourth-day exchanges in a game that has staggered this way and that like a group of fancy-dress nuns on the Western Terrace centred on some wonderful batting from Rahul and Pant, who had in common the object they were holding, but little else.

Rahul is a right-handed technician with a respect for defence and a penchant for the cover-drive. Pant is a left-handed maverick, with no obvious respect for anything other than his right to entertain.

He charged at his second ball, scything Chris Woakes over the slips, and soon top-edged a slog-sweep off Brydon Carse for a one-bounce four. When he fell over trying to repeat the stroke moments later, England reviewed for lbw, only for replays to show a thick inside edge. It was cricket, all right, though not as most of us know it.

Brought together by the early dismissal of Shubman Gill, who played on to Carse for eight, India’s fourth-wicket pair somehow survived England’s best bowling session of the match. Had Harry Brook not put down a sharp but catchable chance above his head in the gully when Rahul had 59, the game might have taken a different path. But the Indians rode their luck and trusted their judgment, with Rahul cementing his reputation as a compiler of tough runs.

In Indian cricket, they talk of the SENA countries – South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia, who together embody the conditions that have so often flummoxed their batsmen. Yet Rahul has saved some of his best innings for the SENA quartet, including a pair of hundreds at Centurion, a century at Sydney and now three in England. It is why, despite a modest overall record, he is so central to this team.

Pant defies categorisation, taking his tally of sixes in this game to eight, and becoming only the second wicketkeeper in Test history – after the former England coach Andy Flower for Zimbabwe against South Africa at Harare in 2001 – to score two hundreds in a game. No Indian had previously achieved the feat against England.

As the partnership grew towards its eventual 195, Stokes looked uncharacteristically passive. Under normal circumstances, trying to defend might have made sense. But Pant is not normal circumstances, and twice after lunch he edged Tongue through a strangely empty slip cordon.

This game has reminded England that, in Bumrah and Pant, they must contend not with mere cricketers but with forces of nature. Bumrah makes the ball sing, Pant makes bowlers weep; neither cares for the textbook. And while fans of Adam Gilchrist may disagree, there is even a case for including both in an all-time World XI.

Even when Pant finally fell for 118, heaving Shoaib Bashir to Crawley at deep midwicket, India led by 293. And when Rahul and Karun Nair took the total into the 330s, it seemed only a question of when they might declare.

Instead, Carse – who had bowled beautifully before lunch with next to no luck – induced a drag on from Rahul, who walked off to a standing ovation after making 138, and India’s gossamer-thin lower order folded again.

Woakes held a sharp return catch to send back Nair for 20 and take his first wicket of a below-par game, before Tongue struck three times in four balls: Shardul Thakur edging to slip, Mohammed Shami bounced out, Bumrah comprehensively bowled. And when last man Prasidh Krishna swung Bashir to deep midwicket, it was Tongue who held on.

England refuse to lie down. And it has given them a crack at an all-time heist.