Mastered

It will be remembered as ‘People’s Monday’ at Lords. The queues of fans snaked through St John’s Wood from the crack of dawn but it was going to take some Indian charm of the highest order to extract a result from a high class 2000th Test. They came to see the little master shoulder the burden of saving his nation at cricketing HQ but England were reading from a different script.

Deep in the final session of play a rejuvenated Stuart Broad trapped Ishant Sharma in front of his stumps for his seventh wicket of the match and England took a deserved lead in the four Test series with a convincing 196 run victory. The celebrations on the pitch showed the level of desire amongst the team to be recognised as the best in the business.

When England is credited with innovative thinking and the man dispensing the credit is S R Waugh then you take notice that this cricket team must have a bit about them. Australia found this to their cost in the winter and they may be smiling ruefully now that the English bowling attack has laid waste to the more vaunted Indian batting line-up dismissing them twice for under 300.

True, India suffered from injury and illness to Gambhir, Tendulkar and, crucially, Khan at various stages of this match but they also arrived under-cooked. Duncan Fletcher coached England to a glorious high in 2005 and humiliating low in 2006/07. More than anyone he knows the value of preparation for a high-octane series. Resting senior players for the recent tour of the West Indies and scheduling one warm-up game in advance of the Lord’s Test has proved insufficient against an England team performing as a cohesive unit.

As Kevin Pietersen, a deserved man of the match, put it succinctly ‘All departments seem to be covered.’ The batting showed grit in the first innings and when the foundations were rocked to the core in the second innings it was Prior and Broad who took the game away from India with a game-changing seventh wicket partnership of 162.

It was the bowling attack that really stood out and not just because of their height. It seems inconceivable that until last December the human tripod Tremlett had only played three Tests since his debut against India four years previously. In his 38th Test Broad finally discovered that he’s more likely to take wickets when the ball lands in the same half of the pitch as the batsman. The spin department out-bowled their more experienced counterpart. It was Anderson though that stepped up to the mark on the final day. Few bowlers in cricket will have taken the wickets of a more illustrious trio than Dravid, Laxman and Tendulkar in the same innings. It was a fitting reward for the leader of the attack.

India has only 3 days to re-group before Trent Bridge. They have the talent to turn this series around but they must act fast. There is a sense that this England is a younger, sharper, more disciplined and resourceful beast than the old masters of India can handle. A combination of great batsmen, cunning bowlers, shoddy fielding and gnarled coach may not be sufficient to see them come from behind.

A cut above

There’s life in the old dog yet. The surfeit of mediocrity that cricket fans are force fed by the Twenty20 format has made some nostalgic for the relative sobriety of an old-fashioned One Day International. The 11th Cricket World Cup has its problems but in the land where the IPL is the cricketing equivalent of the Emperor’s New Clothes the 40,000 people that packed the Chinnaswamy stadium got full value for money. The contest between India and England ebbed and flowed all the way to a breathless finish. It was super-charged cricket for 100 overs in a white-hot atmosphere.

The record books will show that England tied the match scoring 338-8 but at 281-2 in the 43rd over the most improbable of run chases was within touching distance of an England team that had previously looked a pale imitation of the disciplined unit that humiliated Australia only last month. That England didn’t make it over the finish line was due to some inspired clutch bowling from Zaheer Khan. That England was even in with a chance was due to an innings of rare brilliance from captain Andrew Strauss with 158 from 145 deliveries.

Test cricket has shown Strauss as a calm, resolute leader of men – able to motivate them to achieve feats beyond their predecessors. Whereas the challenge of captaincy sent Flintoff off the rails in Australia and saw Pietersen spontaneously combust in the West Indies it has seen Strauss remodel his batting first in the Test arena and then in the 50 over format. Strauss exemplifies a man at ease with his game. He knows his limitations and ensures that he plays to his strengths. England has not seen a more adept, if not as brutal, cutter of the ball since Robin Smith. It takes a rare performance to snatch a man of the match award from the grasp of a Sachin Tendulkar century in India but that was one contest in which there was no tie.

That the result will ultimately not mean much in the course of this lengthy competition does not matter as much as the fact that the World Cup had a contest to match its status as the pinnacle of the One Day game. For those that watched enthralled around the world it will be infinitely more memorable than the plethora of Twenty20 games or mis-matched ODIs involving minnows. For both England and India there are plenty of areas of improvement, not least the fielding. For the other nations there is the knowledge that, India, the red-hot favourites will give you a chance with their bowling – no matter how many runs they score.