Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have brought a clear, aggressive mindset to England over the past three years, an approach that has been hugely positive, freeing up the players and bringing a lot of excitement. But if they have decided to focus on winning games and entertaining the public, and chosen not to play for draws or focus on individual milestones, it does not mean everyone else has. Centuries are still important to players. Sometimes a draw is a positive result.
What we saw from England when India initially refused to accept the draw on Sunday was a combination of natural disappointment – they had dominated the game, played so much good cricket, wanted to force home the advantage and make the final Test a dead rubber – genuine tiredness and a bit of cultural insensitivity. Certain situations are viewed differently around the world.
Remember the Jonny Bairstow incident at Lord’s during the 2023 Ashes, or Ravi Ashwin running out Jos Buttler at the non-striker’s end in the 2019 Indian Premier League? The way those things were viewed in the UK and abroad was very different. I know from my time in county cricket that most teams would have walked off, even if they had a couple of batters approaching centuries, but in international cricket it is different – centuries mean more.
In 2008, I was playing for Surrey against Somerset in the County Championship at Taunton. The wicket was very flat, one day was completely rained off and at the point the game was petering into a draw I was on about 190. The players started shaking hands but Justin Langer, the Australia opener who was the Somerset captain at the time, stopped everyone and said: “We’re staying on – either we get Mark out or he gets a double hundred.”
The game ended a few minutes later when I reached 200. Justin had recognised, even though I was playing for the opposition, there was a milestone a batter had worked hard to earn.
It is not as if the English completely ignore individual achievements. In the same Test we had been happy to celebrate Joe Root’s, when he became the second-highest Test run-scorer. Graham Gooch, Alastair Cook and Jimmy Anderson have spoken of their pride at achieving milestones. I would hope and expect that if a young England player in search of their maiden Test century were 90 not out, their captain would be aware of that moment. To achieve that is a huge thing in someone’s life, there is no guarantee they will be in that situation again, and the confidence it gives them can be huge.
Some of the comments captured on the stump microphone did not reflect well on England. They played some magnificent cricket and dominated the game, but that petulance seems to have overshadowed it. I hope the ending will have taught them a couple of important lessons, about respecting other teams’ cultures and other players’ ambitions and the real value of a draw.
McCullum and Stokes may have no interest in them, but in a five-Test series between two evenly matched teams there are likely to be times when one of them has to fight to save a game and a draw becomes a result to be celebrated. It takes me back to England and South Africa in 1998, when Angus Fraser blocked out Allan Donald in the last over for a draw when we had been completely outplayed to keep the score at 0-1. We were massively buoyed up by that result and went on to win the last two Tests to take the series.
For the final game starting on Thursday the contest is still alive. All the pitches have been pretty flat, but the signature at the Oval, certainly at domestic level, is a good wicket with some grass still on it. Gus Atkinson has not played a lot recently but there is a strong argument for bringing him in. He should get a bit of extra movement on his home ground.
England will need to decide the makeup of their attack not just based on the quality of their bowlers, but on their fragility and how they are dealing with fatigue. People of my generation struggle to understand why, if someone is fit to play, you would not play him. This is a huge game, against huge opponents, with the series on the line. The idea of resting and rotating fit players is puzzling to me: they have bowled a lot of overs, but there is a game to win. The big question is the captain because England cannot afford for Stokes to go bust. So their three seamers have to be bankers who can be relied on to bowl a lot of overs.
At Old Trafford, the lack of penetration from Jofra Archer and Brydon Carse, particularly when the ball was hard and there was a bit of uneven bounce, was surprising. Liam Dawson was tidy, but I thought he would create a few more problems.
Beyond Stokes and Root, the two to emerge with credit were Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley. India never recovered from the way the openers took the attack to them. They are a pair who live by the sword and die by the sword, but we saw how hard it was to bowl to them and how even very good teams struggle to stop them scoring once they slip into gear. People are very quick to leap upon their failures, but we should also savour their successes.