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Indian Express
6 days ago
- Sport
- Indian Express
IND vs ENG LIVE Cricket Score, 5th Test Day 5 Updates: England need 35 runs to win vs India in London
India (IND) vs England (ENG) 5th Test LIVE Cricket Score Today's Match Final Day Updates: England need 35 runs to win the final Test and India need to pick up four wickets. While England are the favourites, Shubman Gill's India stand in with a chance to level what has been an emphatic series thus far. Chasing 374 runs, England were in a bit of a pickle at 106/3; however, Harry Brook and Joe Root launched the counter-attack to push India on the back foot, and despite Mohammed Siraj 's lion-hearted effort in the morning session, England managed to take a dominant position. But late in the day, Prasidh Krishna scalped two more wickets to help India have one foot in the door. After losing the first Test in Leeds, India managed to level the series in Edgbaston. But England managed to take back the lead after a close win at Lord's, and the Old Trafford Test ended up in a draw. If India can pick the remaining four scalps, they will have a chance to end the series 2-2. Mohammed Siraj-inspired India refuse to die, Oval Test, series heading for thriller Day 5 Mohammad Siraj conjured a series of magical deliveries to inspire his team-mate Prasidh Krishna. (AP Photo) Despite England's Joe Root and Harry Brook scoring centuries, India refused to give up. The match reached a thrilling climax with England needing fewer than 40 runs to win. The Indian crowd and players, particularly Mohammed Siraj and Prasidh Krishna, rallied. Krishna took the crucial wicket of Root with 37 runs still needed. The game became a nail-biting affair with India's bowlers dominating and England's lower order struggling. The day's play ended with England needing 35 more runs, leaving the series alive for another day. (Read more from Sandeep Dwivedi)
Times
29-07-2025
- Sport
- Times
England and India seek to redress skewed balance between bat and ball
It is one of the most remarkable of all of the game's peculiarities. That, despite the myriad changes, with covered pitches, helmets and DRS being among the most significant, the average runs per wicket — the essential balance between bat and ball, in other words — has remained pretty much constant since the Second World War. There are short periods when it goes out of kilter, to be miraculously rebalanced again. The Old Trafford Test coincided with the 35th anniversary of Graham Gooch's 333 at Lord's against India in 1990 and, to these eyes, conditions have been the friendliest since that run-drenched summer, when directives about reducing the seam on the balls and bleaching the pitches created a perfect storm for bowlers. This series has been equally challenging. India have five batsmen averaging over 50; England have five averaging over 40; India have made a remarkable 11 hundreds; England have scored seven; there are two bowlers on either side averaging under 30, and two of those, Jofra Archer and Akash Deep, have played only a couple of games each. Shubman Gill, with an astonishing 722 runs, is the standard-bearer for the discrepancy. The standard of fast bowling in this series has been solid, though, with Jasprit Bumrah and Ben Stokes the standouts. Others have had their moments. The peculiar sidelining of Kuldeep Yadav has highlighted the absence of wrist spin, and pitches have deteriorated too little for the finger spinners. Broadly, the batting on both sides is stronger than the bowling: six of the top ten ranked batsmen in the world are from India and England, set against only one bowler — Bumrah — in the top ten from either side. But let us look a little deeper. A truism of professional sport is that standards improve over time, but cricket is an unusual game in that it involves three distinct disciplines: batting, bowling and fielding. All of them may not improve at the same rate. It is a subjective assessment, but my impression is that batting (generally) and fielding have improved at a significantly quicker rate since the game became fully professional than bowling, which may be as good as before but is not materially better. It is not hard to explain why different aspects of the game improve at variable rates. Athleticism and fitness, two essentials for fielding, are a consequence of conditioning and training, both of which players can give more time to in a well-resourced, professional environment. Ground fielding and catching, both close and in the deep, are undoubtedly better now, in general, than 30 years ago. We remember the likes of Australia's Mark Waugh at slip because they were so outstanding compared with their contemporaries. So it is with batting. Resources now mean that there is no limit to the amount of practice young batsmen can seek. India have a handful of staff who are dedicated to delivering as much time with the sidearms as their batsmen want. Facilities, without which batsmen cannot improve, are better across the board — especially in the subcontinent — than before. T20 has stretched horizons, so that bowlers cannot shut down quick runscoring so easily. Footage of 30 years ago, say, dates batting but not bowling. While batsmen can have an insatiable appetite to improve, and while many new shots — the reverse-sweep, ramp etc — have come into play, bowlers are restricted by their bodies and by the limits of invention. We know that the top range of fast bowlers' speeds has been reached; we know that bowlers' bodies restrict the amount they can practise and it is hard to see what new deliveries can be exploited now. Improvements in fielding act as a counterpoint to improvements in batting. Other bowler-friendly developments, such as DRS and some pitches that have become more helpful (in India and Australia especially, recently) after the introduction of the points for the World Test Championship, keep the balance between bat and ball in check. The specifics of this summer — namely the driest since 1976, trouble with the Dukes balls, four chief executive's pitches and two lots of back-to-back matches, with only three days in between — have contributed to the balance being skewed to scoring runs. Quite how far the pitches are a response to the cash-strapped nature of English cricket (before the Hundred cheque arrives) is hard to say, but there has been a general absence of pace and bounce, which would be the England team's principal demands. Short turnarounds between matches, a consequence of the squeezed schedules, are far more frequent than before, and have added to the challenge this summer, with every match going the distance. After Edgbaston, when England had spent 234 overs in the field, and India 158, there were only three days before Lord's. Now, after Old Trafford, when England and India spent 257 and 157 overs in the field respectively, the Oval looms with three precious days in between. It is likely, therefore, that England will countenance a completely fresh pace attack for the final Test, just as India must contemplate whether to push Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj into the field once more, with the series still on the line. While bowlers of yesteryear played far more frequently in first-class cricket, they rarely had to go from one intense Test to another with such short breaks in between. No wonder, then, that things got a little tetchy at the end of the Old Trafford Test: five overs' worth of cricket out of 414 provoked most comment — as well as some absurdly over-the-top criticism. Fifth Test, the OvalThursday, 11amTV Sky Sports Cricket/Main Event
Indian Express
25-07-2025
- Sport
- Indian Express
‘Play tennis or golf if you can't handle short balls': Gavaskar calls concussion sub rule a ‘like-for-like substitute for incompetence'
India batting legend Sunil Gavaskar made a scathing assessment of cricket's existing concussion substitute rule during the India-England Old Trafford Test, terming it nothing but a replacement cushion used for the benefit of 'incompetent' batters who cannot handle short-pitched bowling. Gavaskar's remarks came after India wicket-keeper Rishabh Pant suffered a fractured toe while batting on Wednesday in Manchester before making a dramatic return to bat and score a half-century in India's first-innings on Day 2. Speaking on Sony Sports on a discussion of like-for-like substitutes to be implemented in cricket, Gavaskar first questioned the existing concussion substitute rule, that limited the nature of injuries for which a player can be substituted to bat and ball in a match rather than meeting only fielding requirements as wicket-keeper Dhruv Jurel will do for Pant in the remainder of the match. 'I've always felt that you are giving a like-for-like substitute for incompetence. If you are not good enough to play short-pitched bowling, don't play Test cricket; go and play tennis or golf. You are giving a like-for-like substitute for somebody who can't play the short ball and gets hit,' said Gavaskar on the rule that came into effect in mid-2019. However, Gavaskar said the International Cricket Council (ICC) must review the rules to allow certain replacements for injuries like the one Pant sustained freakishly while attempting a reverse swipe off fast bowler Chris Woakes on Day 1 of the fourth Test in the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy. 'Here, it is a clear injury (Pant); there has to be a substitute. I want some sort of committee appointed to take a call on this. There is a cricket committee, ICC has a cricket committee, but at the moment that's headed by Sourav Ganguly, the ICC chairman is Jay Shah, and the ICC CEO is Sanjog Gupta,' said Gavaskar. With several Indians heading multiple positions in the international board, Gavaskar said a fresh committee could look into the substitution roles to maintain objectivity. 'So we don't want a situation for the media here in particular and in Australia to say, 'Oh, because it's an Indian situation, they have started to do that'. So, let it be a totally different committee to look at these injuries, maybe with doctors, etc., and let that committee come to a call,' he added. This is not the first time the legendary Mumbai cricketer had slammed the usage of the concussion sub. Earlier this year, Gavaskar lambasted the Indian team management when they used the loopholes in the concussion sub-rule to swap all-rounder Shivam Dube for fast bowler Harshit Rana after the former's batting innings. 'Even by the most generous stretching of the like-for-like term, there was nothing such between Dube and Rana. With tongue firmly in cheek, one can say that they are the same height and have the same standard in fielding. Otherwise, there's nothing like-for-like as far as they are concerned. England has every reason to feel done in. This Indian team is a superb team and doesn't need its wins to get tarnished by such acts,' he wrote in a column for The Telegraph.
Indian Express
19-07-2025
- Sport
- Indian Express
‘Earn the right to be loud after doing the quiet work…': Greg Chappell details how Shubman Gill must improve captaincy
His bat muted and his heated on-field arguments offering a spark for England to cash in on at Lord's, India captain Shubman Gill will face a real challenge to his identity as skipper in the forthcoming Old Trafford Test, feels former India head coach Greg Chappell. Chappell noted that a lack of identity or resolve over what must be done meant that India's precipitous collapse in a 193-run chase could not be salvaged by a stoic Ravindra Jadeja and the 84 balls of resistance offered by Mohammed Siraj and Jasprit Bumrah. Chappell put it all down to the lack of input from the young skipper Gill, who has yet to establish the identity of the direction the Indian Test should walk in under him. 'The truth is, Jadeja was the only recognised batter left. If India were to chase down the target, he had to take calculated risks. His job wasn't to leave balls and collect singles – it was to win the match. That clarity should have come from the dressing room, from the captain. He needed to be told directly: 'You are the man who has to get this done. The tail's job is to hang in there with you, but you must go for the win,' Chappell wrote on his ESPNcricinfo column. 'And this is where Gill's leadership challenge becomes very real. He must start setting those expectations – clearly, proactively, and consistently. 'Gill must define what sort of team he wants India to be. The captain sets the tone – not just with words, but with actions, clarity of purpose, and visible standards. That means demanding discipline in the field. India cannot afford to slip back into being a poor fielding side. The best teams are superb in the field. They don't give easy runs. They don't drop chances,' Chappell remarked. Chappell added that Gill must learn to accept that a skipper will not always answer with the bat alone. 'Great captains are great communicators. Gill must become one – and quickly. Whether it's at training, in the middle or in the dressing room during a break – clear, calm communication is essential. His bat can't always do the talking. He must learn to speak in a way that aligns the group, encourages belief, and creates trust.' The former Australia skipper also added that while Gill's animated on-field self, like the one during his altercation with England opener Zak Crawley on the third day of the Lord's Test was fine viewing, it must only come on the back of confident preparation. 'The Old Trafford Test is shaping to be the biggest examination yet for Gill – not just as a batter, but as a leader. He's learning on the job, but the timeline is not generous. He must bring composure, clarity, and confidence to a side that desperately needs it. And he must do it now. 'That doesn't mean he can't show emotion. In fact, his passion on the field at Lord's was good to see. But actions like getting into Zak Crawley's face over time-wasting only matter if they are backed up by the hard work done behind the scenes. A captain earns the right to be loud when he's already done the quiet work of planning, uniting, and inspiring his group,' iterated Chappell.
