India’s squad had undeniable talent, but its inexperience – especially in batting under challenging conditions – was a concern.<\/p>\n
KL Rahul, Ravindra Jadeja, and Rishabh Pant were seasoned campaigners in England, but Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sai Sudarshan, Karun Nair, Washington Sundar, and Abhimanyu Easwaran had never played at this level there before.<\/p>\n
Gill’s modest overseas batting record fuelled doubts about his suitability for captaincy. Added worries over pace ace Jasprit Bumrah’s fitness further dimmed India’s prospects.<\/p>\n
Losing the first Test at Headingley from a winning position, as England chased 373 in the fourth innings, confirmed pundits’ doubts.<\/p>\n
But India recovered from this setback in style to win the next Test at Edgbaston by a whopping 336 runs. <\/p>\n
The swift turnaround came not from luck but skill and relentless determination – qualities that defined India’s performance for the rest of the series.<\/p>\n
The three Tests that followed were bitterly fought, both teams raising the intensity and skill levels, matching each other blow-for-blow.<\/p>\n
This sparked frequent heated clashes but also unforgettable acts of heroism, with players from both sides battling fatigue and injury to keep their teams in the fight.<\/p>\n
Some aspects of what kept India in the fight right through the neck-and-neck contest comes through in the stats.<\/p>\n
Three batsmen – Gill, Rahul and Jadeja – topped 500 runs in the series. England had one, Joe Root. <\/p>\n
There were 12 centuries made by India, England had nine. <\/p>\n
Mohammed Siraj with 23 was the highest wicket-taker from either side. The only bowler to take 10 wickets in a match was Akash Deep.<\/p>\n
Failures were scant, heroes were plenty, but the pillars of India’s extraordinary show in the series were Gill and Siraj.<\/p>\n
Gill, in Bradmanesque form, made 754 runs, 430 of them coming in one Test. <\/p>\n
He failed by a mere 20 runs to break Sunil Gavaskar’s record series aggregate, and was also second to Don Bradman (810) for highest runs made in a series by a captain.<\/p>\n
To be mentioned alongside Bradman and Gavaskar testifies to Gill’s achievement and potential. His prolific scoring earned his team’s full respect, and after a hesitant start, he quickly grew in confidence, showing fine temperament and smart tactics in tough situations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"India’s squad had undeniable talent, but its inexperience – especially in batting under challenging conditions – was a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-54351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}