England's entertainers must start converting thrills into series wins

AMID last week’s frustrations at England coaxing one of their heaviest Test defeats from a position of rare opportunity, came numerous reminders of the way standards have shifted upwards under this regime.

- Malik Ouzia

Turning 33 for three in India’s first innings, and then 224 for two in their own, into a 434-run shellacking was indeed quite the feat from Ben Stokes’s side; the final two days of Rajkot’s Third Test right up there with any of chastening passages that have sent previous visits to India into doom spiral.

The difference, of course, is that this one did not arrive until beyond the tour’s midway point and that the existential questions over philosophy that raged at the start of this week did so with the series still more than just mathematically on the line.

In picking over the wreckage, many drew comparison between England’s first-innings implosion and a similar one during the Second Ashes Test last year, referred to as ‘the Lord’s collapse’ without need for anything more.

Given England tend to play twice a summer at the London venue, under previous regimes, ‘last year’s Lord’s collapse’ might have meant any one of four.

That, a couple of Tests into an India tour, there was not a more recent example to lean on felt something of a novelty, too.