It was for a day like this that India had been stacking its playing XI with extra batsmen. The additional middle-order batter proved invaluable as the team braved its first truly testing English day of the tour fittingly, in the final Test of a nearly two-month-long campaign.
Karun Nair’s inclusion in place of all-rounder Shardul Thakur boosted India’s batting depth to eight, a move that paid off as they posted a respectable 204/6 in testing conditions. Karun Nair led the resistance with an unbeaten 52, while the dependable Washington Sundar supported him with 19 not out at stumps.
Batting at No.5, Karun Nair produced a composed and resilient knock, skillfully negotiating swing and seam under lights and overcast skies in the final session. He showed great discipline in leaving length deliveries and patiently waited to pounce on the short ones, frequently punching them through cover with authority.
One of Karun Nair’s straight drives had unintended consequences for England. While chasing the ball to the boundary, Chris Woakes tumbled awkwardly into the fence and injured his shoulder. The sight of him using his sweater as a makeshift sling was worrying, and it now seems unlikely the all-rounder will take any further part in the Test. It was a moment that could have tilted the game in England’s favour, but they failed to capitalise.
The Test began with the Oval offering exactly what subcontinental batters dread a lively pitch with green patches, overcast skies, and frequent showers. England had stacked their pace attack with three tall, menacing quicks Gus Atkinson, Josh Tongue, and Jamie Overton all operating alongside the experienced Chris Woakes.
Unpredictable England Falters Again.(Karun Nair)
In the opening session, England’s erratic bowling attack squandered the chance to exploit the gloomy, moisture-laden conditions. The first three Indian wickets owed little to the atmosphere. Yashasvi Jaiswal fell to a standard in-swinger the kind any new-ball bowler delivers regardless of conditions. KL Rahul played on while attempting an ill-advised cut to a ball too close to his body. Shubman Gill’s run-out, the result of a poor single attempt, left India at 83/3. It was a moment for England to trigger a collapse but their lack of discipline with the ball let the opportunity slip.
The Oval was reminded today that there are two distinct ways to bowl on a pace-friendly track. One is the classic Glenn McGrath method hitting a handkerchief-sized patch just outside off-stump, extracting movement both ways with relentless precision. The other is the Josh Tongue approach wild, unpredictable, and definitely not one to try at home.
This was the template: scatter the ball across the pitch, send down a few dreadful wides, and never let a batter settle. Then, out of nowhere, unleash a couple of sharp in-duckers. In a spell that veered between the sublime and the ridiculous, Jamie Overton delivered two massive blows removing the day’s best batter, Sai Sudharsan, and the series’ toughest nut to crack, Ravindra Jadeja. Both were undone by the ‘blow cold all day, blow hot for a few deliveries’ style perfected by Tongue. Until those unplayable balls arrived, both Sudharsan and Jadeja looked well set.
Hroughout his 108-ball stay, Sai Sudharsan displayed a compact and disciplined technique against the moving ball. Facing England’s right arm pacers operating around the wicket, he executed a well-thought-out and tightly controlled plan tailored to counter their angle and movement.
Devising his method
Standing on middle-leg, Sudharsan took a subtle stride forward, shifting his right leg across to align perfectly with the off-stump. That front foot became his reference point the marker and gatekeeper for his bat’s downswing. He cleverly tucked the bat behind his right leg, waiting to respond to the ball’s trajectory. If the delivery angled in towards his front foot and therefore the stumps his bat would instinctively come down in a straight line to meet it, with minimal fuss.
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When the ball landed outside the line of his right leg aligned with off-stump Sudharsan would withdraw his bat with the elegance of a pendulum swing. But planting the front foot on the off-stump line comes with its risks. Batsmen often lose balance against fuller deliveries, and Sudharsan wasn’t immune. On one occasion, he stumbled while digging out a yorker from Overton, briefly losing his footing but not his composure.
This strong off-side commitment carries its own risks especially the tendency to edge balls to leg slip. England had dismissed Sudharsan that way earlier in the series and continued to bait him into repeating the mistake. At the Oval, his innings ended with an edge to the slips. While his front-foot technique had largely helped him judge what to play and what to leave, he faltered against one that jagged in sharply. Sudharsan was watchful, his head steady over the ball, but on a pitch where the ball zipped through at pace, even slight misjudgments proved costly. Day 1 at the Oval offered little margin for error.
Jadeja, much like Sudharsan, relied on a similar method gracefully withdrawing his bat from the line of the ball when required. He too fell in a comparable fashion. Throughout his stay, Jadeja judged the line expertly, combining caution with calculated aggression, never missing an opportunity to score. But like Sudharsan, even his well-honed technique couldn’t shield him from a ball that did just enough off the surface.
When Overton banged one in short, Jadeja responded with authority, ramping it over the slips for a boundary. But the very next ball was a brute an unplayable nip-backer. Jadeja had no option to leave it, as it was arrowing in towards the stumps. Yet, negotiating the sharp bounce was nearly impossible. The ball climbed steeply, caught the shoulder of his bat, and flew straight into the wicketkeeper’s gloves. A dismissal that underlined just how unforgiving the Oval pitch was on Day 1.
