Winning the fourth Test to level the series at Ranchi will be the biggest achievement of Ben Stokes’s captaincy to date, after England did not come second at Rajkot. Having taken a figurative lead over India by the end of the second day, they finished a poor third.
When England went 2-0 down against Australia last summer, both margins of defeat had been close. Stokes had only to do some tweaking to start England winning: tempering the enthusiasm of his young batsmen and bringing in Mark Wood and Chris Woakes to fire up the bowling.
On this occasion Stokes does not merely have cracks to paper over but fault lines. His most senior batsmen, Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow, are in a bad place, while his spinners keep pitching the ball in a bad place, as they are too inexperienced to bowl six accurate balls an over.
There are tenable arguments for bringing in Dan Lawrence for Bairstow, because Lawrence has shown fine footwork in India before and scored a Test fifty when the ball was turning. But the message that dropping Bairstow would send to the squad would have a seismic impact: if the miracle-worker of the 2022 summer is dropped after three fruitless Tests, suddenly nobody’s place is safe.
Omitting James Anderson and Mark Wood is the last thing Stokes and Brendon McCullum will want to do for a crucial, must-win encounter but it looks inevitable. Thanks to the self-destruction by England’s batting in their first innings at Rajkot, which gave them an inadequate breather, Anderson and Wood had to bowl on each of the first three days of the third Test and were spent by the end.
Ollie Robinson’s canny length might just have Yashasvi Jaiswal nicking a catch behind the wicket in Ranchi, and he deserves the chance to prove that he can get through a whole Test without breaking down. But if England are going to play two seamers in Ranchi, which has been the norm in the two Tests there so far, and if Anderson and Wood have to be rested, Stokes is going to be saddled with another rookie, Gus Atkinson, who has yet to play a Test.
Harry Brook is being missed: he could have slotted into Bairstow’s place without too much disruption to morale. But the most important absentee so far as Stokes is concerned is Jack Leach. When his senior spinner flew home with a knee injury, Stokes lost something precious, which none of his rookies or Root as an offspinner can give him: control. He may talk about being only interested in taking wickets, but not every statement by this or any other management in sport is objective truth. What Stokes needs from two of his bowlers, if India are not to run away with this series to a 4-1 victory, is control.
Tom Hartley and Rehan Ahmed, and Shoaib Bashir in one Test, did exceptionally well to blur the difference in quality between the spinners of the two countries, but the gulf is growing ever more starkly. England’s youthful spinners have been thrown in at the deep end, with minimal grounding in red-ball four-day championship cricket, and once their novelty has worn off their effectiveness has plummeted: India’s batsmen know they only have to wait for the bad ball dropped short. India’s three spinners meanwhile have taken more than 800 Test wickets and know all that there is to know about bowling at home.
It looks as though Rehan Ahmed — not over-promoted in a sense because there is no other wrist-spinner in England of any note — may have to go back to the drawing-board to become a regular Test spinner. He could evolve into a number six Test batsman who offers some leg-breaks that will take the occasional big wicket while his googly can mop up tailenders, but to become a specialist spinner, who can support three seamers, it looks like the drawing-board: to replace his hurried action, minimal use of his leading arm and low release-point with a more measured run-up, greater use of his left arm, standing taller in delivery, and developing a trajectory which sends his stock ball upwards before dipping and turning. But such a change could well make him less of a T20 bowler.
Stokes and McCullum have too many problems to sort out before Friday, starting with those senior batsmen and the lack of a senior spinner. Of the two Tests to date at Ranchi, both of them high-scoring, one has ended in a draw; and even to achieve that, given where England find themselves now, would be miraculous.
But let us not rule out a consolation victory in the fifth Test in the foothills of Dharamsala, where conditions will favour the seamers more than any pitch in the plains. A scoreline of 3-2 to India would look misleadingly close but it would be a great achievement by England from here.
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