The bowel-churning thrill of the runs Ravindra Jadeja chose not to score and the wickets England failed to take

4 minute read

Hold us here, Test cricket. Hold us here in uncertainty; at the sour spot of maybe or maybe not. Leave us here a while to grow overfamiliar with the sight of Ravindra Jadeja turning down another single because it’s still quite early in the over.

We all know that a tight finish is good – and a tight finish in the Test format quintuply so – but the climax to the Lord’s Test also highlighted the magnificent breadth and scope of the five-day game – the sandbox format. 

In the first Test of this series, a Ben Duckett powered England batting line-up chased 371 to win, almost entirely on the final day. They scored at over 4.5 runs an over, the boundaries flowed and it was thrilling. 

On the final day of the third Test, India made 201 fewer runs than that at roughly half the pace. Boundaries were rare but given the lower target, each one was twice as valuable as at Headingley. Despite that fact, a lot of the time when Ravindra Jadeja could have taken runs, he wilfully declined them.

This finish was, if anything, even more thrilling. 

Breadth and batter

The shorter the format, the narrower the players’ options. In limited overs cricket, batters, in particular, are obliged to progress quickly. The only real question is just how far they push that. Bowlers’ tactics are shaped by this with additional constraints imposed by how many overs they can bowl.

In contrast, a Test match stretches upwards and outwards, as far as the eye can see; a colossal span of pristine white canvas. You can do what you want with it. Spin or seam; length or yorkers and bouncers; target the stumps or hide the ball way outside off stump. Slog, block, get ’em in singles or leave all the run scoring to the bloke at the other end. Make a dash for it now or kill time and hope things get easier.

At Lord’s on the final day, everyone made their decisions.

Jadeja didn’t want Jasprit Bumrah to face too many deliveries, so for the first four balls of each over he declined singles. Ben Stokes knew this and so moved his men to block the fours. The end result was that for quite a lot of the day, not very much happened. 

Except it did. 

Nothing changes, except everything

When a team needs 50 to win with two wickets in hand, it shouldn’t really be too nerve racking for the fielding side or its supporters – least of all when the scorecard reads 140-odd for 8. Logically, you’re still a good distance from defeat. The batters aren’t winning any time soon. 

But then hold things just there for a while and see what happens. Hold the score static for a few minutes, for a few overs, and how do you feel now? Do you still feel the same? 

The slower things go, the nervier everyone feels. Even a relatively small run target starts to feel impossibly distant when you’re standing stock still. Meanwhile, the odds of a wicket only ever feel like they lengthen the further you get from the previous one. 

When a team races to victory, your body doesn’t always have time to respond. The result is upon you before you’ve had time to think of something to worry about. 

These slow ones though? Man, they give you the time to ruminate. And given the size of that Test canvas, there are so many things you can ponder. ‘Why doesn’t he look for boundaries? Why doesn’t he have a gully in? What if? What if?’ Every question you ask only increases your investment in the outcome; an outcome that seems in no particular hurry to arrive.

When the stomach butterflies proliferate quicker than the match moves, these feelings can quite swiftly get out of hand. It’s no kind of fun really, your system getting overwhelmed by events (and non-events) that are wholly out of your control.

Appeals are made. Fielders are picked out. Edges clear the slips. After one or two eternities, the score’s snailed its way to 30 to win with one wicket remaining.

The world turns, seasons change, empires rise and fall and it’s 25 to win. This could end next ball. Or it could end in an hour. Excruciating.

If the final result does eventually break your way, all of the anguish will have been worthwhile – but the painful truth is you can’t ever know that in advance.

All you can do at the outset is sign up for the wait in ignorance, then watch those singles not happen…