England made short work of the 371-run target on Day 5 in Leeds ©Getty
Shardul Thakur had two balls to hold on. Not with the bat, but with the ball. It was the 79th over, England needed just 30, and any remaining flicker of India's hope rested on reaching the second new ball. If there was even the faintest crack in the chase, it could only be prized open by Jasprit Bumrah with a fresh Dukes in hand.
Shubman Gill, wearing the strain of captaincy in his first Test in charge, offered Thakur a 7-2 off-side field - a clear message: shut one side down. Thakur ran up and bowled it full on middle-stump. Root glanced it fine, found the man in the deep, and walked through for a single after throwing up his head in disappointment. Anywhere else, that was four. Thakur too threw his head up. Perhaps he thought he could pull off the double bluff and surprise the No.1 ranked batter.
One ball left. Gill walked up, added another catcher on the off-side for an uppish drive if the ball held on the surface. Even more insurance. But Jamie Smith pierced the field anyway, steering a short ball behind point for a boundary. It was a near-meaningless passage in a game that had already slipped away. And yet it said everything about what India lacked in Leeds - not just penetration, but control. Not just the brilliance of Bumrah, but the discipline and defensive edge from their support cast that could have made a 371-run chase feel like a mountain rather than a fast-track pursuit.
India will rue the dropped chances and the batting collapse that kept England in a game they should have been shut out of, long before Day 5. But even with those accounted for, 371 remains a tall ask, even at Headingley. This ground is a nightmare to defend on if you don't know its rhythms. The outfield races, and the slope - running down towards the pitch from the Kirkstall Lane End and climbing back up from the Football Stand End - constantly pulls your angles off-centre.
And across the match, fast bowlers went at an economy of 3.99 - brisk, but expected here. India's third and fourth seamers - Prasidh Krishna and Shardul Thakur - went at 6.28 and 5.56 respectively. Krishna may have ended with as many wickets as Bumrah, but he never looked like offering the same control - especially in the first innings, where his short lengths allowed England's top order to line him up. Thakur, until a brief post-Tea flicker on the final day when he dismissed Duckett and Brook in the same over, neither stemmed the flow nor created pressure.
It is not a new problem. In their last Test in England - Edgbaston 2022 - India defended 378 with Thakur and Mohammed Siraj as their change bowlers. England got there with time and wickets to spare and Siraj and Thakur combined for 26 overs in that second innings and conceded at 6.26. The contrast to the Test just before that - at The Oval - in 2021 is telling. Even for a pre-Bazball era England side, that the openers needed 40 overs to add 100 in a chase of 368 was a function of control exerted by the Indian attack. Thakur himself went at 2.75 to the over. Then, Jadeja went to work on the rough outside the right-hander's leg-stump, until the ball was scuffed up just right for Bumrah to deliver his spell of reverse-swing chaos.
It is what Shubman Gill and Gautam Gambhir must now figure out. When wickets aren't falling, when there's nothing in the air, nothing off the pitch, can India still shut down the exits?
There will be passages when a Bumrah or a Siraj spell is done. England will choose those moments to attack, as they did in Leeds and the change seamers might need to commit to the mundane: short extra-cover in place, short midwicket in too, and just the same good length on off stump, over and over. Or bowl dry lines to a 7-2 field, wide outside off, asking the batter to reach or retreat. Boring cricket. Necessary cricket. While Gill was reactive at times in moving fielders to where the last boundary went in Leeds on the final, his challenge was compounded by his change seamers getting hit on both sides of the wicket.
It was what made Ishant Sharma such a valuable cog in India's golden pace years: his ability to soak up hours, dry up runs, and hold one end even when he wasn't blowing through line-ups. Even Mohammed Shami, critiqued for not pitching it fuller in England to convert all those beautiful plays-and-misses into edges and wickets, was defended by then bowling coach Bharat Arun in
