England shatter records, take your pick

Professor Stokes knows numbers - but people are more important

    England’s 28-run victory at the Rajiv Ghandi Stadium in Hyderabad on Sunday will take a day or so for the statisticians to quantify but several more the travelling supporters to digest and, perhaps, even longer for some of the England players to process.

No team has ever recovered from a first innings deficit of 190 in India. It just doesn’t happen. A couple have scrambled desperately towards a draw, but none have ever contemplated the preposterous notion of victory. It was cricket’s impossible. Ben Stokes enjoys that.

    Pick your own fact or statistic to tease, bemuse or bewilder. Tom Hartley, a ‘bolter’ selection, was savaged in the first innings to such an extent there was speculation about ‘career threatening’ bruising. His first nine overs in Test cricket cost 63-runs – after a recovery from 4-0-39-0. He finished with 25-0-131-2. A careless chip to midwicket and a long-hop heaved to cow corner. Reward for effort and endurance, not skill.  

He won the match in the second innings with 7-62 from 26.2 overs. Statisticians and analysts will have their various ways of measuring this transformation between a debut innings and the second, but they aren’t necessary. Just look at the numbers.

    “When Baz (Brendon McCullum) told me two days before that I would be making my debut, and taking the new ball, I thought he was taking the piss,” said 24-year-old Hartley after a Test match he is unlikely to surpass having also made scores of 23 and 34 with the bat. Every run felt crucial as he scored them, and so they proved to be. It’s a bit of a bummer doing that on debut, suddenly on the mountain peak looking down when you thought you’d be looking up and just hoping for an invite to climb-team two weeks earlier.

    Ollie Pope’s highest score in India was 34 before this Test. He was confirmed as the vice-captain before the tour leaving a potentially awkward choice between Jonny Bairstow and Harry Brook in the middle order. Pope was the vulnerable one. Brook’s withdrawal from the tour allowed everyone to breathe easy, for a while. Pope’s skittish, frenetic 11 balls in the first innings furrowed knowledgeable brows.

    His second innings 196 smashed its way into the top dozen scores ever made by an Englishman on foreign soil, and that’s a tough club to break into. He scored the runs in the fashion of ‘new England’, in the style of ‘Bazball’, taking risks, being bold and shedding the fear of failure. Shredding it, actually.

Ben Duckett (35 & 47) won’t be remembered for his role in this extraordinary victory but he set the tone, laughing metaphorically in the face of that 190-run deficit – and literally on one occasion when he missed a reverse-sweep by a foot – but the rest took their cue from him. In less than 19 overs England were 113-1 and the 190-run mountain had become a less daunting hill.

    Ben Stokes was a professor with a recently invented time machine, constantly tinkering and tweaking the knobs and valves, but not based on science. Stokes knows all the science, but his leadership is based on emotion and the hearts of his troops. He looks in their eyes and feels the cricketing souls of his troops before making a call.

    And when he doesn’t, he tells them why, how much he values them, and how important they are to the team. It’s not hyperbole, or even bollocks. You really can see it happening if you’re lucky enough to be present and even luckier to be employed to watch closely. What a match. What a memory. Stokes and McCullum spoke about “making memories” when they teamed up. Gentlemen, many thanks for this one. It won’t be forgotten for as long as I can still remember things.

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