It couldn’t happen could it? Unbelievably England and India will return to Edgbaston for a sold out Day Five with the hosts needing just 119 more runs from their remaining seven wickets in order to pull off a remarkable win.
England started their innings requiring 378 to win, more than anything they’d ever successfully chased before – their current record requiring that Ben Stokes innings against Australia at Headingley in 2019.
Before the start of their international summer, chasing 378 would have seemed laughable to watchers of this England side, in fact they’d only managed to make 350 just once in in any of the previous 18 innings before the Brendon McCullum era. But this is the summer of "Bazball" baby, throw out your form guides and rip up your rulebooks, England have got a cool new older step-brother and everything’s different now.
The amount of mileage cricket pundits have got out of the word ‘Bazball' in recent weeks is no doubt somewhat overblown, but if you wanted a pure distillation of just how England’s new approach has dramatically revamped their game, then you only had to look at how they began their chase on Day Four.
A few weeks ago, not many would have pegged Alex Lees – whose start to Test cricket had, if we’re being generous, been at the stodgier end of the batting scale – as a man set to thrive in this new England gameplan and yet here, just as at Trent Bridge in the series against New Zealand, the opener played a valuable hand.
5️⃣3️⃣ runs from the Powerplay
Scorecard/Clips: https://t.co/jKoipF4U01
#ENGvIND pic.twitter.com/IzJqnHHU54
— England Cricket (@englandcricket) July 4, 2022
Encouraged to play with attacking intent, Lees looks a different, and it has to be said, better, player than he did in the embryonic stages of his international career in the Caribbean. That clarity of purpose on display almost immediately, charging Mohammed Shami and bunting him through mid-wicket from just the third ball he faced.
If you needed any insight into Lees’ mindset you only had to watch him at the non-striker’s end the over before Ravindra Jadeja was due to come on, shadow batting reverse-sweeps and ramp shots in anticipation.
It was preparation that came in handy, as Lees, not content with skipping down the pitch and blasting Jadeja down the ground for four first ball of the over, pulled out the reverse sweep from the last ball, picking up another four through backward point.
Traditionally the openers’ job is to see off the opposition’s opening bowlers, today in the raucous, tone-setting start to England’s chase, Lees along with Zak Crawley, did just that, except instead of the traditional method they did it the Bazball way.
Lees and Crawley came out swinging, ‘teeing off (not recklessly)’ in exactly the manner Shane Warne once infamously proposed England should do – Bumrah lasting just four overs that went for 22, Shami five that cost 21, India immediately put onto the back foot.
England’s whirlwind opening stand of 107 showed, for all the hype, exactly what they are trying to achieve with ‘Bazball’, India were stunned – only yet another fearsome spell from Bumrah either side of the tea break got them back into things.
The quality of India’s bowling meant Joe Root and Bairstow were more circumspect at first, but they had started to cut loose by the close, their unbroken stand taking England tantalisingly close but still agonisingly far away from completing a third successive remarkable chase and ensuring the summer of Bazball keeps rolling on.
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