IND vs ENG, 3rd Test Match, Day 5: England Survives Jadeja Scare at Lord’s

This special edition of #MidMatchMemo captures every twist, turn and talking point from Day 5 of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy.

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THE PROBLEM WITH fantastic matches is that they’re often settled under the cruellest of circumstances. Cast your mind back to Edgbaston 20 years ago when an Andrew Flintoff-led England beat Australia by the narrowest of margins. And the third Test of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy was no less dramatic, tense and ultimately, heartbreaking. The Indian team’s oldest player, Ravindra Jadeja, shepherded the tail, getting it to wag like it hasn’t done in the series so far. And for the longest time, it looked like he would get the visitors over the line.

With the target gradually being whittled down, England was running short on ideas, inspiration and energy. The hosts had been forced to fall back on the off-spin bowling of the injured Shoaib Bashir, who had spent most of the day off the field with a broken finger. His sixth over saw a confident Mohammed Siraj taking the strike, happy to let Jadeja score the runs while he kept blocking the ball at one end. And with the fifth ball of the over, it seemed he’d done just that… except the ball had its own ideas and proceeded to roll back onto the stumps. The English fielders exploded in ecstasy and Siraj sunk to his knees in despair. This was cricket played at the highest tempo at the home of the sport. It doesn’t get better than this.

At the start of the final day of a gripping Lord’s Test, all four results were technically possible. Although, in the absence of rain, a draw was far from being considered even a remote likelihood. India kicked things off on Monday with 135 runs to score and six wickets in hand. England ended the fourth day on a high, prising out Akash Deep with (what would be) the very last ball to add to the wickets of Yashasvi Jaiswal, Karun Nair and Shubman Gill.

An inspired Jofra Archer sent Rishabh Pant’s offstump cartwheeling for a meagre nine runs before England captain Ben Stokes pinned India’s top-scorer KL Rahul in front of his stumps for a patiently-constructed 39. An athletic effort from Archer saw Sundar caught and bowled for a duck, and at 82/7, India was staring down the barrel of certain defeat. That is until Ravindra Jadeja and Nitish Kumar Reddy joined forces to chisel away at the total. And for a while, it worked, with the duo frustrating England for 91 balls to bring India 30 runs closer to the target.

Reddy feathering the lightest of touches off Chris Woakes to be caught behind at the stroke of tea left the final two wickets with an 81-run mountain to climb. Luckily for India, Jasprit Bumrah was up for the challenge and put on 35 runs off 132 balls with Jadeja to bring the number of required runs below 50. His dismissal came against the run of play, during a passage where it looked like India might poke, dab, nurdle and nudge its way to a memorable win at Lord’s.

The importance of Jadeja and Player of the Match Stokes to their sides cannot possibly be overstated and India and England respectively will want to wrap them in cotton wool ahead of the next match. With the teams heading to Old Trafford in nine days with England leading the series 2-1, here’s a look at five key talking points from Lord’s:

The perfect match: In terms of providing thrills, exhilaration and a flurry of emotions, the Lord’s Test is probably not going to be atop most lists titled ‘Best Test matches ever’. However, from the standpoint of a sports contest, the third match of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy was an exemplar of the longest format of the game. Underscored by both teams scoring exactly the same number of runs in their respective first innings, the match featured two evenly matched opponents trading blow for blow, counterattack for counterattack, big hit for big hit and important wicket for important wicket. Sprinkle over a bit of spice in the form of the invectives being aimed at each, and what you had was the perfect Test. In the end, the two sides were separated by just 22 runs — a margin that seems much wider than the actual difference between the two teams.

Captain’s effort: The first two Tests of the series saw Indian skipper Shubman Gill leading from the front with the bat. In the Edgbaston Test, he almost singlehandedly batted England out of the contest. At Lord’s, it was time for his opposite number to show the way with his own performances. After chipping in with a useful 44 in the first innings, it was Stokes’ direct hit to run Pant out (and end his 141-run partnership with Rahul) that put the skids on the freescoring Indian innings. He also dismissed Karun Nair and Reddy just as they were starting to look dangerous. And in the second innings, he removed Akash Deep at stumps on Sunday to ensure England would be bowling to a new batter on Monday morning. By adding Rahul to his wickets tally early on the final day, he set in motion the wheels for a well-deserved England win. He’d pop up again in the post-lunch session to remove a well-set Bumrah.

Time to re-examine slow over rate penalties: As alluded to briefly in the Day 3 analysis, both teams had been guilty of bowling their overs at extremely sluggish rates. Amidst the frequent delays for ball-changes (see next section), players receiving treatment on-field, spells of gamesmanship in the form of time-wasting and the fact that spinners bowled a very small percentage of the total overs, not a single day say the daily quota of 90 overs hit. Realistically, the two captains will be hit with a financial penalty and some demerit points. But questions have to be asked about whether this is a sufficient deterrent when it comes to not getting through overs quickly enough. In this writer’s view, unreasonably slow over rates that see less than 90% of the days overs bowled (and not as a consequence of the weather) should result in penalty runs being added to the opponent’s total. This is certain to speed things along quite nicely.

A Dukes retreat?: Speaking of wasting time, all the hullabaloo surrounding the state of the Dukes cricket ball really came to a head during this Test. It got to a point where Dilip Jajodia (owner of Dukes-manufacturer British Cricket Balls Ltd) was on hand during the match to drop soundbites about the state of his products. Unseasonal heat, drier conditions and stronger bats, he went to pains to argue, had forced the balls to lose their shape during the ongoing English cricket season. But these explanations had few takers with commentators, pundits and players (past and present) alike constantly discussing the state of the ball. Will the 2025 season see SG and Kookaburra significantly strengthen their cases to handle the England and Wales Cricket Board’s cricket ball needs?

Plenty of extra thinking for India: As the inevitable postmortem of the Test is conducted, the very first thing the Indian think-tank will want to examine is the 63 runs conceded to England in the form of extras. And considering the fine margins in this match, this is a wrinkle that needs to be ironed out post haste. While a majority of these came in the form of byes and India doesn’t have an overstepping problem, these are still free runs being gifted away. It can be argued that stand-in wicketkeeper Dhruv Jurel isn’t as accomplished as Pant, a dropoff in quality of this magnitude simply isn’t good enough at the highest level of the game. Gill and Co will be keen to set this right in the nine days before the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy rolls into Manchester, where India will be raring to draw level.

Karan Pradhan is editor-in-chief of Story Mode, a gaming and gaming-adjacent magazine. Follow him on X/Twitter @karanpradhan_