After a humbling defeat in the opening Test of the five-match series in Headingley, Shubman Gill's India roared back with a thumping 336-run victory in the second Test at Edgbaston on Sunday (July 6). It is India's first-ever Test win at the venue from nine attempts dating back to 1967. In a game that saw several records being broken, mostly by Gill himself, it was fittingly the Indian captain who took the catch to end England's innings. The five-match series is 1-1 with three games to play and Jasprit Bumrah set to return in the next Test at Lord's.
Akash Deep, easily the best bowler of the match across both sides, picked up the last wicket as Brydon Carse's mishit went only as high as cover where Gill did the rest. It wasn't the brightest of starts to the day for the visitors with rain playing spoilsport for the initial hour, thereby forcing a delayed start to the final day. At that point, there would have been some nerves in the dressing room, particularly with a lot of criticism directed at them overnight for the timing of their declaration.
However, much like they have done all through this Test match, India's bowlers appeared unfazed by the rain delay and once play resumed, got back to business seamlessly. Deep started the proceedings on the final day by taking out Ollie Pope with a sharp nip-backer that forced an under-edge onto the stumps, almost a mirror image of the Ben Duckett dismissal late on day four. Another searing nip-backer brought about the end of Harry Brook who had no chance of surviving the LBW against that brute of a delivery.
It was the perfect start for India and after these twin strikes, any semblance of hope that England might have had of escaping Edgbaston without a loss, faded away. Jamie Smith fought a lone battle, showing his mates that the pitch was still good enough to bat on. Of course, he too had his struggles against Deep's whistling inswingers and nip-backers but crucially, he held his composure and attacked the other bowlers.
Ben Stokes tried to dig in with Smith but the English skipper fell at the stroke of lunch to a lovely slider from Washington Sundar. That dismissal left Smith with the lower order for company. In the second session, the English wicket-keeper bat expanded his ray of strokes and threatened to score his second ton of the game. However, after hitting Deep for a couple of sixes, he fell in trying to go for the third maximum. Carse added a few more runs that helped to narrow the margin of defeat but it still turned out to be a potentially demoralizing loss for England.
Deep ended with six, taking his match tally to ten wickets and in a game where the two teams combined tallied over 1700 runs, it was a phenomenal achievement. The surface at Edgbaston was a batters ally, particularly once the ball got older. The new ball, though, had enough zip and it is in this phase that Deep destroyed England in both innings. He was so good with his lines and lengths that he comfortably outbowled his English counterparts.
As for the batting, it was all about Shubman Gill who ripped apart a series of records with marathon 269 in the first innings and an attacking 161 in the second innings to lead India's historic match aggregate of 1000-plus runs. Put into bat, India's total of 587 was built around Gill's phenomenal innings with fifties from Ravindra Jadeja and Yashasvi Jaiswal. England were then sent packing early by Deep as they fell to 84/5 but a glorious double century stand between Smith and Brook did threaten a possible miracle for the home side.
Unfortunately for Stokes' men, Mohammed Siraj ripped through the lower order with the second new ball as he got a six-fer, an understated spell that came at a massive moment in the game. Once they got that significant 180-run first innings lead, India weren't going to let things slip and they batted England out of the game ruthlessly. With a target as big as 608, even Bazball wasn't going to be enough and India deservedly sealed a series-levelling win.
