CRICKET:ENGLAND TOOK the first step towards becoming the number-one ranked Test side in the world when they completed a comprehensive victory against the current leaders India in front of perhaps the largest fifth-day crowd that this or any English ground has seen.
There were still more than 28 overs remaining when Stuart Broad, rejuvenated in this match, rapped Ishant Sharma, the final batsman, on the pads and saw one final raising of Billy Bowden’s crooked finger. The Indian target of 458, set when Andrew Strauss declared after tea on the fourth day, was notional at best with survival the only real option for India, and they were finally dismissed for 261, the last five wickets falling for 36 in 68 deliveries with the new ball after tea.
The sides meet in the second Test which starts on Friday at Trent Bridge, another ground on which England’s swing bowlers generally prosper.
This was to be the day on which Jimmy Anderson, surely the world’s leading swing bowler, rose to the challenge of bowling England to success by single-handedly removing what many believe to be one of the most powerful middle orders the game has seen since the West Indies’ vaunted Three Ws.
Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar have 100 Test match centuries between them but only Dravid, the most tenacious of them, has made one of those at Lord’s, and that in the first innings of this match. But Anderson had demolished The Wall within half an hour of the start, returned to trap Laxman shortly before lunch with the creakiest loosener he has bowled all summer and then tore out a subdued Tendulkar, batting at five because of the time constraint placed on him by his fourth-day absence with a viral complaint, two balls after he had been dropped at slip by the England captain.
Only Muttiah Muralitharan has dismissed the most productive Test batsman of them all more times, and that from three times the number of matches. With the further wickets of Suresh Raina, whose defiant 78 was top score, and Harbhajan Singh, Anderson finished with five for 65, his third five-wicket haul at Lord’s. Both he and Broad finished with seven wickets apiece in the match, with four to Chris Tremlett, who appears to be carrying some sort of niggle but tore in nevertheless.
The match will not go down as one of the finest India have played, for only fleetingly, and then as individuals, did they give any impression of having real claim to being regarded as the best side around.
The Indian Premier League commitments coming on top of the successful World Cup resulted in fatigue at best for some players and, in the cases of Virender Sehwag, who delayed having a shoulder operation in order to play 11 IPL matches and is still at home, Gautam Gambhir, who carried an injury into that tournament that kept him out of India’s recent tour of West Indies, and Zaheer Khan, who also missed that tour, incapacity.
Others, such as Tendulkar, possibly to their detriment in this first game, were rested, it being no coincidence the stand-out Indian batsmen at Lord’s – Dravid, Laxman and Raina – were all in the Caribbean. The single warm-up match in Taunton showed a shambolic team that believed it had only to turn up and that its talent would get it through.
Instead, the hamstring injury collected by Zaheer, overweight and undercooked, cost them dearly, with the whole preamble and performance here casting some cloud on the early days of Duncan Fletcher (although quite how much say he has in matters is a moot point). He has some work to do in the next few days.
Having lost the toss and being put in to bat in gloomy, clammy, swing-bowling conditions, England did outstandingly well to fight their way through the first day, their only real luck coming with the loss of 40 overs at the end of it, allowing them to regroup in better weather, and the man of the match, Kevin Pietersen, to capitalise on his first-day determination with a double century.
It gave England the daylight that allowed them to ride out the storm briefly created by Ishant on the fourth morning. Only the catching has been a cause for concern, with slip catches, very catchable ones at that, being put down by Strauss, twice, and Graeme Swann, and Ian Bell missing a chance yesterday at short leg that he would normally take. Two of these reprieved Laxman, one Dravid and yesterday’s by Strauss, off Anderson, Tendulkar. England cannot expect them to be so accommodating in the future.
Requiring nine wickets yesterday, England knew this surface had more in it than some of the moribund fifth-day pitches that Lord’s has thrown up in recent times, and that the odds were stacked considerably against India being able to survive disciplined bowling. So they plugged away.
Dravid hung his bat out uncharacteristically to kickstart things, and then either side of lunch, Gambhir was lbw pushing forward to Swann, Laxman scooped head high to midwicket and, with the old ball starting to reverse swing, Tendulkar was caught only half-forward. Four years ago, a combination of rain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and the umpire Steve Bucknor deprived England of a win, and during a sixth-wicket stand of 60 it looked as if Dhoni, with Raina, might be digging again.
But Dhoni, too, played insipidly outside off stump against the new ball, Anderson and Broad made their inroads into the tail and when Anderson, from round the wicket, found the edge of Raina’s bat, the game was all but done.
GuardianService
Scoreboard at Lord's
England: First innings 474-8 declared (K. Pietersen 202 not out, M. Prior 71, J. Trott 70; Praveen Kumar 5-106).
India: First innings 286 (R. Dravid 103 not out).
England: Second innings 269-6 declared (M. Prior 103 not out, S. Broad 74 not out).
India: second innings (overnight 80-1)
A. Mukund b Broad 12
R. Dravid c Prior b Anderson 36
VVS Laxman c Bell b Anderson 56
G. Gambhir lbw b Swann 22
S. Tendulkar lbw b Anderson 12
S. Raina c Prior b Anderson 78
MS Dhoni c Prior b Tremlett 16
Harbhajan Singh c Tremlett b Anderson 12
P. Kumar b Broad 2
Zaheer Khan not out 0
I. Sharma lbw b Broad 1
Extras (nb-6 lb-6 b-2) 14
Total (all out, 96.3 overs) 261
Fall of wickets: 1-19, 2-94, 3-131, 4-135, 5-165, 6-225, 7-243, 8-256, 9-260, 10-261.
Bowling: Anderson 28-7-65-5, Tremlett 21-4-44-1 (6nb), Broad 20.3-4-57-3, Swann 22-3-64-1, J. Trott 2-0-11-0, K. Pietersen 3-0-12-0.
Result: England won by 196 runs.
England lead the four match series 1-0.
