England’s spin twins out-tweak their counterparts after Joe Root’s maiden ODI ton captivates a packed Lord’s.
At a parched Lord’s on one of the many dry pitches thrown up by this arid English summer, the spin twins of Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid combined superbly to choke India’s chase and fully justify Eoin Morgan’s gamble to bat first.
England’s approach in recent years has been to get on the front foot and keep coming at whichever team confronts them, unfurling barrages time after time, looking for 300 as a minimum despite the risks. It has seen them pass that mark 31 times since the spring of 2015, exactly double the number struck in the same period by their opponents today.
After a rare misfire at Trent Bridge in the first of this three-game series, it was a case of normal service resuming at Lord’s. Jonny Bairstow and Jason Roy went hard initially, Bairstow pulling Umesh Yadav for six and Roy climbing into anything full. The pair added 69 in 10 overs before the emergence of Kuldeep Yadav.
Yadav, whose grip on England so far this summer has been mesmeric, promptly removed them both, Bairstow getting tangled up with a sweep shot and diverting the ricochet from the back of his bat onto the stumps, and Roy clubbing a slog-sweep straight to deep mid-wicket.
This is a big summer for Joe Root against the team they all want to perform against. Up for auction in this year’s IPL yet going unsold, Root would have been keen to emphasise his credentials among the game’s elite with a strong start in the short-form leg of the tour.
With three single-figure scores on his card so far, however, and undone twice in a week by Kuldeep, Root would have been fidgety to get into this series.
He came into this one without a hundred in any cricket this summer. With five Tests in six weeks from August 1, and the arrival in town of Virat Kohli in possession of the title Root so desperately wants, England’s Test captain has been seeking to unlock his customary rhythm.
Root has made three huge Test hundreds at Lord’s but until today had yet to register an ODI ton. He began circumspectly against Kuldeep, who was used by Kohli throughout the innings in short bursts as a strike bowler, but in cahoots with Eoin Morgan they never let the scoreboard stagnate against India’s trio of spinners. From 22 overs of spin, England took 129 runs in all, and their refusal to be dominated may have consequences beyond this series into the next.
Morgan, meanwhile, was skittish at times and struggled for timing but he nonetheless made a brisk half-century before mis-timing an attempted bunt to perhaps the worst ball Yadav’s bowled all summer.
His dismissal unbalanced England, and when David Willey joined Root, England were 239/6, with Ben Stokes (5), Jos Buttler (4) and Moeen (13) perishing within eight overs of one another. But Willey has emerged this summer as a dangerous lower-order hitter, and here he provided muscular support to Root as England bulldozed past 300.
Root brought up his century from his 109th delivery; the next, from Umesh Yadav was dispatched over the mid-wicket rope. Willey was now eyeing his own milestone, and in the final over he scampered through to his first fifty in an England shirt.
Despite another score north of 300 on a pitch that turned for slow bowlers and was gripping for the medium pacers, England’s bowlers would still have been nervy at the halfway stage.
After such a comprehensive defeat at Trent Bridge, where Kohli and Rohit Sharma had dominated an ineffective attack, they knew that early wickets would be imperative.
With Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan easing into their work, it was a shock when Sharma, perhaps through over-confidence after two hundreds in a week, ran at Mark Wood and lost his shape attempting a mid-wicket heave.
The wicket seemed to change the complexion of the innings. Dhawan, having been majestic on the drive, soon followed, slashing uppishly at David Willey, and when a Liam Plunkett inswinger arced down the slope to take KL Rahul’s inside edge, India were suddenly 60/3.
Kohli, though, was just getting going. Burnishing his average of 68 in ODI run-chases, and settling in with Suresh Raina, he looked to be in the mood to post his first half-century at Lord’s.
But with Kohli on 45, having played a workmanlike innings containing just a couple of boundaries, Moeen found some turn down the slope and the off-break cannoned into his knee-roll. Kohli walked straight off, giving little consideration to a review. As of tonight, Lord’s remains uncrackable. For Kohli, the second Test here on August 9 looms conspicuously large.
With the captain gone and Moeen and Rashid locked in tandem, any hopes of a realistic run-chase dissipated into anti-climax. In all, the spin-duo conceded just 80 runs between them.
But while Moeen looks in good fettle going into the Test series, Rashid will not be lining up bedside him after stepping away, at least for now, from first-class cricket. On today’s evidence, and seeing yet again how naturally these two good friends dovetail one another on the pitch, there may be a few figures at the top of English cricket of a mind to ask Rashid to reconsider.
With the game petering out, MS Dhoni became just the fourth man in history to make 10,000 ODI runs. The feat, achieved by a strolled single to third man as the evening sun dropped on a game that had long since fizzled out, received little more than a polite acknowledgment. The day was done. England had reasserted themselves.
The teams move on to the deciding match at Headingley on Tuesday.
