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India chose to let speculation swirl around the potential involvement of Jasprit Bumrah in Wednesday’s second Test, insisting that a decision over whether to play their premier bowler would not be taken until late on Tuesday night.
Their fear is that should Edgbaston produce a pitch which favours batting, a prospect made more likely by the dry conditions in which the ground staff have been working, and the rain that is tentatively forecast for the weekend were to fall, a draw would become the most likely result. Playing the 31-year-old might end up doing little more than draining his reserves of energy ahead of a third Test that starts at Lord’s next Thursday. Shubman Gill, the India captain, would say only that Bumrah is “definitely available”.
Speaking before his team’s final pre-match training session Gill said selection decisions would be taken only after assessing the state of the pitch. “We just thought we’re going to have one final look today and see what kind of combination we want to go with,” he said. “I want to see the wicket one last time before we decide.”
Unhelpfully, the hover cover was parked on it for the entire duration of India’s visit to the ground, leaving Gill to ruminate on Ben Stokes’s description of the surface: “It looks a really, really good wicket. They’ve tried to produce something we were after. We’re pretty clear when we speak to groundsmen what we want. They try their hardest for us as well.”
Bumrah has done minimal training since the first Test ended in victory for England last Tuesday, and in keeping with his normal, restful pre-match routine was not at Edgbaston on Tuesday. Akash Deep, who cleaned up England’s top three on his first morning as a Test cricketer in Ranchi last February, is the most likely beneficiary if he is rested.
Beyond the result India’s most obvious problem in the first Test was a lack of lower-order runs – while their top five batters averaged 72.10 in Leeds their bottom six scored just 65 between them across both innings. “Nobody really expects that your last six is going to get out in under 40 runs,” Gill said. “Even if they play bad you expect maybe 100 or 80 runs.”
But though four of that top five scored a century, one of them twice, Gill insisted it was they who were largely to blame for the team’s inability to post match-winning totals, using the way he himself got out in the first innings, to a loose shot off Shoaib Bashir when on 147, as an example.
“Once you are set, and you know that you don’t have that much depth in your batting order, maybe the top order could take a little bit more responsibility and bat them completely out of the game,” he said.
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Stokes shut down questions about Bumrah’s involvement as “India’s problem to deal with”. Instead the only bowler who troubled him on Tuesday was Jofra Archer, who has remained with the group despite not being selected for this game.
“Facing him in the nets there, he got the ball swinging quite nicely, and effortless pace,” he said after training. “It’s been a while since I faced him, so it was a little bit of a wake-up call.”
