Its extremely tough and almost inhumane not to get affected by the Taliban’s taking over of Afghanistan in recent days. The amount of grief witnessed on TV or even Social Media is beyond description; how could the world come to this? When the world is still reeling due to ongoing, raging pandemic, we have another catastrophe.
The biggest takeaway possibly from these events that has truly shaken up the world forever is the concept of humanity? Have we failed our own when no one even shows solidarity online when countless people strive to escape their own motherland?
All I see is videos of passengers in grief, seeking help etc. Can we please stay away from not worsening things for people watching & who could get affected more as a result of such posts on SM platforms? Think of Afghani people stranded in other countries and at-least for them we must ensure Social Media doesn’t become a source of more grief & distress.
In a completely different part of the world, India and England played out a classic Test Match. It had all the makings of a potboiler, filled with emotions, drama and some fine individual performances as India thumped England by 153 runs.
A dominant India went on to script a historic win at the Lord's
Should I say the result was expected? Such is the apathy of this English Test team that after having a dominant days 2,3 & 4, where Joe Root made batting look so elegant & easy, it took one incident at the fag end of Day three where Jasprit Bumrah bounced out James Anderson and the legend looked visibly disturbed by the barrage of bouncers hurled at him.That stretch of about 10-15 minutes changed the complexion of the game. Or let’s say from my point of view, that incident spurred a confident India to become extremely aggressive and allowed them to exert control of proceedings. For England, since that Bumrah-Anderson over everything fell apart; tactically.
When you have got India’s biggest threat to increase the lead well past 250 or 300, Rishabh Pant out pretty early on Day Five, ideally you should have some basic common sense bowling to the lower order of India, which would eventually lead to them folding pretty quickly.
Lost, weak, tactically clueless; this could sum up England’s plan to counter Jasprit Bumrah & Mohammed Shami. For those who missed this live, the highlights package don’t do justice to what England ended up doing by having six fielders in the boundary with one close in fielder for the most of Bumrah-Shami partnership that saw Mohammed Shami unleash some magnificent shots that would make any top order batsmen proud!
Despite the complete lack of game awareness and planning by Joe Root & his men, full credit must go to Bumrah and Shami for withstanding some tough overs from Mark Wood and then as they became more comfortable with the conditions, they went on pile on the agony for the English who shockingly were ‘hoping’ for a mistake from the Indian tail enders, and not sticking to the basics and setting a field for that.
Despite having only 62 overs to dismiss England in the second innings, India seemed firm favorites to win the Test. England looked gone, they just didn’t seem in the contest. Was it the incident with Bumrah-Anderson that brought about that semantic change in the attitude of the teams? Or was it that with Mark Wood injured, James Anderson looking like he was suffering a niggle, Joe Root had very little options and hence opted to become ultra defensive? Only they could have answers for that question I suppose!
With a top three consisting of Rory Burns, Dom Sibley and Haseeb Hameed and a fired up, riled up Indian bowling lineup especially after the bowler’s efforts with the bat in the second innings, everyone was just waiting for Joe Root to walk out. England’s openers have got three ducks between them as their contribution which is a record in English Cricket.
Full credit to the Indians for pouncing on a wounded home nation. The attacking bowling, positive mindset to give Jasprit Bumrah six over spells clearly worked wonders. As he was causing all sorts of troubles to every English batsmen. Virat Kohli’s aggressive attitude has to be lauded as he never allowed England to settle in at all in the second innings.
Incisive, ferocious spells from Ishant Sharma and Mohammed Siraj paved way for a historic win at the home of Cricket. A quality advertisement for a format of the game that’s always in the scanner for it’s relevance, popularity etc.
This game should if anything tamper that debate for a while, as no other format in this beautiful game can we expect such emotion, drama, tension to lead up to such a result. Yes, there are concerns and rightly so of the game becoming far too focused on expanding its wings and popularity, thereby reducing the quality of Test Cricket, which is a fair enough debate but which can be paused for another time.
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| Have Pujara & Rahane managed to silence their critics? |
For me personally the biggest takeaways from this emotionally charged up game of Test Cricket would be the exquisite batting of KL Rahul and Joe Root; pure, classical shots that were so good to watch! Apart from that the resilience shown by Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane who pretty similar to every other batsmen in the English team apart from Joe Root were little unsure of their place & role in the team.
They answered all their critics by playing out the second session of Day Four without a loss of a wicket which on hindsight gave India the edge. Pujara played an important knock but certainly some questions would still be raised on whether he could have played differently in his style of play; little more impetus on him rotating the strike around maybe?
Well, India can be proud of what they achieved, it’s not their fault that England had only two batsmen trying to delay the inevitable; Joe Root and Jos Buttler. Fantastic effort from this team to ensure they won so emphatically! It’s going to take serious soul searching for the hosts to come back in this series; but it really would make for a riveting watch if they can bounce back and produce a closely fought Test series as we still have three matches to go.
Heres hoping for a fantastic Test series to follow and hoping that the devastation and the trauma caused in Afghanistan can come to an end soon. It has been extremely tough to read or watch those events unfold & I am and will be eternally grateful to the game of Cricket as it played a huge part in deviating my mind completely from the happenings of the world we live in; where humanity is fighting an existential battle of sorts as we see a country going back into the dark all over again..
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