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Jaiswal-led India turn Oval odds towards them
The highest successful chase at the ground is 263. England were 50/1 chasing 374 to win the final Test
Kolkata: Yashasvi Jaiswal struck his sixth Test hundred, Ravindra Jadeja his fifth fifty of the tour, Akash Deep his maiden Test fifty and Washington Sundar a fifty at more than a run a ball to help India set England 374 to chase and win the fifth Test and take the series 3-1.
The odds of that are high though as the record for the highest successful fourth-innings chase at the Oval is 263 even though this England team toppled 378 at Edgbaston in 2022 and 371 at Leeds in June.
England lost Zak Crawley when Mohammed Siraj produced an inswinging beauty that snuck below the opener’s bat and crashed into his stumps off the last ball of the day. This was just after Crawley and Ben Duckett got to another fifty-run opening stand, their ninth for this series. With Chris Woakes ruled out of the rest of the Test because of injury, India effectively need eight more wickets to win this Test and square the series but given England’s history with fourth innings shootouts, this surely is poised for a riveting finish on Sunday.
Throwing down the gauntlet to England involved scoring a 300-plus total for the eighth time, the joint-most for a team in a Test series, alongside Australia versus South Africa in 1910-11, the 1928-29 Ashes and Australia versus West Indies in 1975-76. India added 114 runs in the morning session, 115 in the afternoon and 92 in the final session, Jaiswal being a rock through two of those with a hundred that wasn’t without its fair share of chances. To the two dropped catches on Friday, add another off Jaiswal that England couldn’t latch on to. This was in the 58th over, when Jamie Overton got the India opener to tuck a length ball with a leg slip in place. Duckett dived low but the ball burst though his hands.
Talking point of the morning though was the 107-run partnership between Jaiswal and Akash that almost saw out the first session. Akash came as a nightwatchman, but left with plaudits usually reserved for top-order batters as he braved whatever the English threw at him to grit out a resilient fifty. His innings too wasn’t chanceless as Crawley dropped Akash early in the session.
England started wavering pretty soon and India exploited that, adding important runs before Akash was dismissed for 66 off a short ball. Shubman Gill had looked really good in the little time he was out there going into lunch.
With two boundaries, Shubman Gill started on a positive note but the second session yielded a first-ball wicket of the India captain when Gus Atkinson got the ball to swing in and trap him leg before. That meant Sunil Gavaskar’s record tally of 774 runs, the most by an Indian batter in a Test series, stays intact. This was a situation made to order for Karun Nair who came to this series with considerable county cricket experience but England’s bowling kept him on the backfoot, asking questions of him and making his stay a jumpy one. Still, 40 runs were added for the fifth wicket before Atkinson got the ball to kick up and take an edge off Nair’s gloves.
Jaiswal, however, kept going, raising his second hundred of the series and the fourth against England. Without Woakes, England were stretched by now but kept testing their limits by making their pacers come back for short bursts. That persistence finally gave England a much-needed breakthrough when Jaiswal holed out to third man for 118.
Jadeja survived a close leg-before that he reviewed quickly before taking India to tea with Dhruv Jurel for company. How India bowl on Sunday without the support of another specialist fast bowler is to be seen but the decision to include Jadeja and Washington Sundar has at least yielded a rearguard the visitors desperately needed at the Oval. Between Nos 7, 8 and 9, India scored 140 runs, Jadeja taking 71 balls to reach his fifty, but Sundar getting to his half century in just 39 balls.
By now England are well aware of Sundar’s technical prowess but on Sunday they also got a taste of his counterattacking ability when India were 357/9. Against Atkinson, he picked a length ball and deposited it over square leg for a six, to Josh Tongue he just used the pace to smash a six over long leg before taking on a short ball and clobbering it over long leg for another massive six. Atkinson returned but Sundar carted him for two boundaries and a six to get India to a total they should be able to defend.
