Future Perfect: The Kids Are All Right

Gill and Jurel hold out promise by simplifying a challenging chase to help India seal series

- Somshuvra Laha

Fourth innings chases in India usually come with disclaimers. Pitches can be reduced to dust bowls, spinners can turn the ball square, close-in fielders start swarming in your face and the chirping can get irritatingly loud. Random scary numbers are thrown at you. Like this: Not once in the last 10 years have India scored 150+ in the fourth innings to win a home Test. You would still think rationality won't go for a toss even when the target is 192, 10 runs less than what India were dismissed for in Hyderabad and their lowest score in seven innings of this series. But it did.

It's all in the mind, really. This wasn't as bad a pitch as it was made out to be. The groundwork laid out diligently the previous evening, all India needed was to build on it. Rohit Sharma was leader-like, taking as many strikes as possible, spooking England with a few ODI-like shots while constantly imploring Yashasvi Jaiswal to bat out a few balls before going after a bowler. He didn't, trying to go over extra cover against Joe Root but getting a leading edge instead.

Only Sharma can shed light on what possessed him to skip down the pitch to Tom Hartley like that but at that point, India needed some confidence in the form of a partnership. It wasn't to come. Rajat Patidar was snaffled easily at short-leg. And when Ravindra Jadeja and Sarfaraz Khan were dismissed off consecutive balls in the first over after lunch, all those fourth innings chases gone wrong could have derailed India's thought process.