Birmingham: For the first 20 days of this tour, it was all about hosts England, up against a young and inexperienced Indian team, setting the narrative about how the series was going to be played. The big chase in the first Test at Headingley only amped up the reverence for ‘Bazball’ and England’s aggressive, go-for-the-kill approach.Every media briefing featuring England players has been all about bluntly stating that the team is ready to chase down whatever target India sets for them. “We don’t play draws,” has been the rhetoric from the England camp. The strategy has sometimes bordered on arrogance. The go-allout approach continued till the eve of the final day at Edgbaston, even when India had taken complete control of the Test.
All this while, India could only insist they were ready to thwart whatever was thrown at them by England. Sunday evening, however, was a different story. Shubman Gill, with his first Test win as India captain under his belt, dared the England team to stick with ‘Bazball’ heading into the Lord’s Test this week.
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Till now, the current England team management has been convinced about playing on flat batting decks. “I don’t know whether they will give us this kind of pitch at Lord’s. Let’s see what they prepare,” Gill said, cheekily.The tone has changed in both camps. England captain Ben Stokes pointed out that the Edgbaston pitch had gone against his team. “It was obvious the pitch was not playing the way we thought it was going to. If anything, the longer the game played out, the more it suited the Indian team,” Stokes said.As India’s Test captain, Gill, still only 25 years old, has been poised and restrained, refraining from making tall claims. He knew it was up to him to convince everyone that he deserved the job. He didn’t have a flattering Test batting record either.On Sunday, he allowed himself to be his bold and carefree self, an attitude that has defined India’s latest generation of cricketers. The boys in Gill’s dressing room thrive on being in the face of the opposition. For the first time on this tour, Gill appears a man firmly in charge of proceedings.“Where is my favourite journalist? I actually wanted to see him today,” Gill quipped when he was reminded of someone in the British media asking him about India’s winless record at Edgbaston on match eve. “I had said this is the best Indian team to have come to England. And I stand by that,” he said with a wide grin.After the Headingley defeat, there were murmurs in certain quarters about whether India was missing the aura of Virat Kohli or Rohit Sharma. Those doubts should now take a backseat, given how Gill has carried himself through the second Test and led with clarity and authority.Gill’s team was also appears to be easing into the rhythms of Test cricket. The last two matches make for a rare instance in Indian cricket when they had to play all sessions in a Test match. Contemporary Indian cricketers are used to playing very short Test matches at home.“It definitely helped us in a massive way. When we play in India, not many Tests last five days. If we are able to score runs consistently in the upcoming games and post around totals of 400 or 300 regularly, we will always be in the game,” he said.Asked if he had grown as captain, Gill quipped: “Most of the days when we are playing here, we are batting and not fielding much.” As the room broke into laughter, Gill continued, “We only fielded about 65-70 overs in the second innings and 90 overs in the first. It feels pretty long because of the way that they play. But it actually hasn’t been that long,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.In contrast, Stokes had to concede his team lacked the ability to bat even 80 overs to save the Test on the final day. It also hurt that his bowlers, pampered by his batters chasing down huge totals, couldn’t restrict India to a score that could get his batters back in the game. “The task today was batting out the 80 overs. The result that we always try to push towards was beyond us. There’s a way in which you address that. Going into our shells is one way. But for us to bat those 80 overs, we had to go out there and play the way that we played. India pushed to get 600 for some obvious reasons,” a resigned Stokes said.Indian needed to throw a counterpunch quickly after the heartbreak in the first Test. Gill and his team have successfully flexed their muscles, for now.
