Birmingham: Pacer Akash Deep picked a superb 6-99 to complete a ten-wicket match haul as India beat England by 336 runs to get their first-ever Test match win at Edgbaston. The statement victory has also meant that India levelled the five-match Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy series at 1-1.
India came into this game without Jasprit Bumrah, not including Kuldeep Yadav and being 0-1 down after losing the Test at Leeds. Akash, who came in as Bumrah’s replacement for this game, stepped in to produce a fast bowling performance for ages – troubling batters with the new ball on a flat pitch to bowl out England for 271 on the last day, with more than a session to spare.
Akash has also become just the second Indian bowler to take a ten-wicket haul in a Test in England after Chetan Sharma took 10-188, co-incidentally at Birmingham back in 1986. He was well supported by Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar taking a wicket each, with Shubman Gill, who hit 269 and 161, getting his first victory as India’s Test captain.
Despite rain delaying day five’s start by 100 minutes, India managed to pick the remaining seven wickets and successfully exorcise their ghosts of losing at Headingley from a sureshot winning position with a famous victory in Birmingham.
Akash kickstarted India’s path of victory by removing overnight batters Ollie Pope and Harry Brook in the early phase of morning session, before Washington’s dismissal of England skipper Ben Stokes on the stroke of lunch meant the visitors’ were well set to get a huge win.
Akash, who took out Ben Duckett and Joe Root in a scintillating spell on Saturday, gave India the perfect start in his second over of the day when he got extra bounce on a back of the length delivery and hit Ollie Pope on his elbow before deflecting onto his stumps.
He then got one to jag back sharply off a length into Brook and it also kept low to trap Harry Brook lbw, with the review not coming to his aid as ball tracking said it would have hit top of middle stump on ‘umpire’s call’.
Smith, who hit an unbeaten 184 in first innings, took three quick boundaries off Akash, while Stokes showed some authoritative strokeplay by hitting Mohammed Siraj for four boundaries. Ravindra Jadeja got some turn to trouble Smith and Stokes, who doesn’t have a great record against the veteran left-arm spinner.
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Win makes it more special: Gill as Test captainBirmingham: India captain Shubman Gill believes that winning his first Test in his new leadership at Edgbaston, where the side had never won before until Sunday, was more special for him. India registered a massive 336-run win in the second Test against England to level the five-match series 1-1. Gill has been in great touch with the bat in the first two matches of the tour. In just four innings so far, he has accumulated 585 runs at an average of 146.25 and is the leading run-getter in the series. His 269 and 161 (430 runs) at Edgbaston was the second-highest Test aggregate by a batter after Graham Gooch's 456 against India at Lord's in 1990. “I’m very happy we won the match. No matter how many runs you score, if the team doesn’t win, it doesn’t feel like you’ve achieved anything. It’s my first win as a Test captain, and we’ve done it at a ground where India had never won before — that makes it even more special. Motivation is always there, whether you win or lose. "After losing the first Test, we weren’t panicking. We’ve come back from 0-1 before. We knew if we consistently posted 400–450 runs, our bowlers would bring us back into the match," Gill said on JioHotstar. |
