 "Only for the fourth time in the history of Test cricket, and for the first time in 112 years as a team won a five-Test series 4-1 after losing the first Test, with India joining Australia and England in this exclusive club. Reuters")
India saved their best for last and dished out their most clinical display in the final match of the five-Test series against England, thrashing the Ben Stokes-led side by an innings and 64 runs to complete a 4-1 series victory.
India were just as dominant with the ball on Days 1 and 3 as they were with bat on Day 2, bundling England out for modest totals of 218 and 195 after scoring 477 — the highest of the series — on a good batting surface at Dharamsala’s picturesque HPCA Stadium.
Spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Kuldeep Yadav stood out from the rest as far as the bowling performances were concerned, collecting a five-wicket haul in the second and first innings respectively with the former collecting nine wickets for 128 runs in his 100th Test appearance.
Ashwin and Kuldeep had accounted for nine of the 10 English wickets that fell on the opening day as the visitors crumbled to 218 all out from 175/3. Ashwin would then trigger another English batting collapse two days later as he ran through the English top-order before getting rid of the two ‘Bens’ — skipper Stokes and wicketkeeper Foakes — on either side of the lunch interval to leave the visitors staring at a humiliating defeat inside three days.
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As for the batters, skipper Rohit Sharma (103) and No 3 batter Shubman Gill (110) led the way with centuries on Day 2, both bringing up the three-figure mark for the second time in the ongoing series and stitching a massive 171-run partnership for the second wicket. India were also helped by half-centuries from the trio of Yashasvi Jaiswal (57), Devdutt Padikkal (65) and Sarfaraz Khan (56) — with Padikkal shining on Test debut after replacing Rajat Patidar in the XI.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsWith the series coming to a conclusion, we take a look at some of the milestones achieved and records broken in the Dharamsala Test:
— James Anderson became only the third bowler in the history of Test cricket — and the first pacer — to enter the 700-wicket club after Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralidaran (800) and Australia’s Shane Warne (708).
— Ravichandran Ashwin has the most five-wicket hauls among Indians in Tests following his 5/77 on Day 3 in Dharamsala, achieving the feat for the 36th time in the format and going past spin legend Anil Kumble in the process. The Tamil Nadu offie is currently joint-third in the all-time list, going level with former New Zealand all-rounder Richard Hadlee.
— Ashwin also has the best figures for a bowler appearing in his 100th Test, surpassing Muralidharan’s 9/141 against Bangladesh in Chattogram in 2006 with a haul of 9/128 in Dharamsala.
— For the first time since they made their debut in 1932, India have a win/loss ratio of exactly 1 , having won 178 and lost as many.
— Joe Root went past former Australia captain Ricky Ponting to become the batter with most fifty-plus scores in Tests against India. His fighting knock of 84 on the final day of the series was his 21st fifty-plus score against the Indians.
— Root also went past his former captain Alastair Cook in the list of most Test runs by a visiting batter in India. Root currently has 1,272 runs — second only to West Indian legend Clive Lloyd (1,359) — while Cook has been pushed to the third spot on the list with 1,235.
— Only for the fourth time in Test history — and after a gap of 112 years — has a team won a Test series 4-1 after losing the first Test of a five-match series. All three previous instances involved the Australian and the English teams, with Australia winning on the first two occasions in 1897-98 and 1901-02 seasons. England would pull off a similar result in their tour Down Under in 1911-12.