The late show: How Josh Tongue (kinda) outbowled Jasprit Bumrah in that Test match

2 minute read

It feels like Josh Tongue arrived for this match bang on eight hours late. But did he let prolonged abject non-contribution to his team’s cause dissuade him from bagging a hatful? No, for some reason, he did not.

Tongue gleefully licked up rabbit pie, according to the peculiarly nauseating mime of his captain.

Cricketers sometimes talk about being willing to lose to put themselves in a position to win. What they mean is being brave and taking a few bold risks to increase their chances of victory. What they absolutely do not mean is allowing the opposition to steadily progress to 453-5.

That’s very much the wrong brand of ‘risking defeat’.

After 107 overs of this match, that was India’s score and Josh Tongue had figures of 0-78. It was a similar story in their second innings, where they reached 349-6 after 90 overs, by which point Tongue’s contribution was 0-60 off 15 overs.

Two match-losing performances really – and yet our man finished the Test with 7-158 – the most successful bowler in an England victory.

Jasprit Bumrah, by contrast, took England’s first three wickets and generally looked impossible to deal with throughout. He finished the match with 5-140.

Round one to Tongue.

It’s like the old saying goes: Sometimes you unexpectedly go through the lower order like the Ripperveyor head of a Joy 14CM10 continuous miner through candyfloss; other times your team-mates drop about seven catches off your bowling and you lose the will to live.

You don’t always get out of an endeavour precisely what you put in.

Utterly perplexing. But at least we can all agree on one thing: Chris Woakes’ innings, and the 111 runs added while he was at the crease, constituted the decisive contribution to the match.