he’s too good, I’ve been out of the loop where did this kid come from
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wait there’s another one already?
amazing delivery to get crawley
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i recall it being at exactly the level of cricket knowledge i’d gained from PE class and just like ambient australiana, which i appreciated. making cricket into the messenger of like the heat death of the universe or whatever was clever (sorry stylo)
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cricinfo randomly reminded me that sourav ganguly once took 5/34 in an ODI. best ever bowling by an Indian captain!
look at that feisty medium pace - 65, maybe even 70 mph?
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oh I miss Tony Grieg’s commentary
what a cracking collection of dismissals
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i miss how electric ODIs were in those era, i remember staying up till 3am india time watching the NatWest series final with my relatives
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what!!
this test series is already one of the classics of all time imo. the fact that it’s india-england just brings an extra level of spice. both sides featuring great talent on both sides of the ball
This was Jadeja’s fourth straight half-century in four innings. At a time when it was not easy to think straight, he calmed India down with his solid batting. When he went in, India had almost lost the match. Yet again, a Test they had been the better team for longer periods in. When Jadeja went to lunch, he had lost Nitish Kumar Reddy, the last recognised batter he had. India still needed 81 runs for the win. He scored 61 of the 99 runs that came while he was at the wicket. He faced over 30 overs out of the 55 bowled in that time.
Jadeja is so old-school and so naturally gifted that he has not had to constantly upgrade himself. Sometimes it frustrates those who watch him. He still defends spin with his bat beside the pad, something that has been erased out of the game with DRS taking over. Still, his basics are so good that he is one of the best Test players going around.
It is this strength that can become a slight weakness at times. Let’s firstly get it clear that Lord’s doesn’t really have pockets to hit twos into. The square is lush, and it is not easy to use the bowler’s place to run the ball behind square. The balls are soft; even Rishabh Pant doesn’t charge against the old ones because there is no guarantee they will travel.
So once England set defensive fields for Jadeja, he was handcuffed. He doesn’t play the reverse sweeps and the ramps and the kind. With traditional shots, it was difficult to find twos and gaps in the spread-out field to transfer the pressure back on England. It was almost a situation of taking it one run an over, provided the Nos. 10 and 11 hold their end up for one or two balls every over.
The Jasprit Bumrah-Ravindra Jadeja stand frustrated Ben Stokes to no end•Getty ImagesJadeja, though, was prepared to do it in singles. He clearly calculated these were not conditions where he could take the risk. He had the discipline and the physical strength to keep turning up over after over, and back himself to be the last man standing. He kept the sword celebration aside when he reached fifty.
What started as just a “let’s see how far we can get” ended up as a heartbreakingly close defeat. Jadeja came this close to sealing his place in popular legend. A story mothers would tell their babies on their laps. It was not to be. His strengths brought him close. They perhaps kept him from attaining the ultimate win. People will argue whether he should have taken risks. There is no straight answer.
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haven’t been keeping up but i’m hearing words like “amazing” “incredible” “all time great series” etc
this is fantastic comms work by the England Cricket Board as well, condensing the whole 5 day match into a 12 minute video that you can show anybody to get a sense of the rhythm of the sport.
full highlights:
day 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GQdVGsqXYk
day 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anQdpqTQrfY
day 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFVQ6fVIYE0
day 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5SCQtcfJf0
day 5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzr2rXRGJz8
I really enjoyed reading this.
https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/eng-vs-ind-2025-what-did-we-just-watch-osman-samiuddin-1498118
Like any bingeable series, a great Test series also becomes our world for a while. We obsess over its plays and ploys, plots and subplots, heroes and villains and their character arcs. We move to its pace and speak its language and live by its logic. We live by its episodic highs and lows and lulls, its continuity, although we can never really know what comes next. And there can never be spoilers.
Simply watching one is never enough. We must obsess over it online, listen to all the podcasts, read all the pieces, snigger our way through TikToks, and yes, exult and outrage and hot-take all over everyone else’s feeds. A long Test series enforces an element that is the opposite of the binge-watch: the stinge-watch, when you hoard episodes and space them out for your viewing convenience. Barely a break to breathe between some Tests, but a week or more to meditate between others, and yet somehow the arrhythmia feels normal.
Here we were doubly blessed to have, on the final day of the series, a 56-minute recap of every sensation of the 24 days that preceded it. The two boundaries off the first two balls, one authoritative, one unintended, cutting the target down by a fifth; the wicket off the seventh multiplying it back again by five; a chance missed, another turned into a six, a review upheld, one overturned; the breathless, relentless surge and counter-surge of an entire series. England, now India, England again, India again, compressed into under an hour. A recap, but also it hit you like that tool so beloved of the auteur, the long one-shot take, always fraught, always tense, always building to more fraughtness and tension, and never hiding its fragility, of how easily and suddenly everything could go south.
One of my students said they were going to meet Rashid Khan, from the Afghanistan national team. Wish I knew more about cricket so I could chat with him about it.
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rashid khan almost singlehandedly made leg spinning cool again. doesn’t turn the ball a lot but consistently fools the batter
in the short format of the game, limiting runs is generally the bowler’s priority rather than getting guys out per se, and batters are more aggressive to try and keep pace with their targeted score. in that format, rashid excels at fooling batters and keeping the score low / getting guys out when they get desperate and swing big
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