England v India First Test, Day Four Report Card

Featuring preambles, fun police, unusual pendula, bad comedy instincts and Morpheus off the long run

Analystumps - England v India, First Test, Day Four

Preambles
Grade: D-

Well, here we bloody go then. A final day of this Test with England needing 350 to win and India needing ten wickets. Rain about. Jasprit Bumrah about. Television cameras broadcasting the match into my living room about. Perfect.

But how did we get here? The story of day four will tell us, and the story of day four begins, as you’d expect, with the highlights package of day three.

In particular, the moment where we saw two India batters muster an all-run four with the fourth run completed by the non-striker without a bat, having dropped it at the end of his third run. Superb stuff. This, people, is why highlights of the final session (the ‘sleep time session’ as we call it down here) are so, so important.

After the usually excellent Sky coverage then embarrassed themselves by doing a baffling extended segment where they got themselves into an inexplicable dither about how unfairly hard it was for England to make the World Test Championship final, it was time for play to commence.

(Guys, it’s hard because it’s a final of a major tournament. Same as how it’s hard to make the final of the ODI World Cup, or the T20 World Cup. Heck, it’s even hard to make the final of the Champions Trophy (Dubai stronghold notwithstanding). Being the best in the world is hard. That’s why only one team gets to do it at a time.)

Fun Police
Grade: F

England began well with Brydon Carse castling Shubman Gill. Carse-tling? Carstling? Carseling? Carsetling?

(Frankly, I’m unsure how best to spell that piece of wordplay, but I’m sure you get the gist. Open to feedback.)

With India just 98 runs ahead, this brought Rishabh Pant to the crease, with the prospect of some top tier Pantics in store. And, at first, he seemed willing to deliver, attempting a variety of nonsense, charging the bowlers, rolling around on his back at the bowlers, charging the bowlers by rolling around on his back towards them. Anything was possible. Everything was possible.

And then, captain of the fun police, KL Rahul, wandered over to talk some sense into him (the KL stands for ‘Kop (Levity)’).