Ali Martin has filed his match report from Ranchi, which is my cue to sign off. Congratulations to India, who have been clearly the better team. Congratulations to Stokes and Brendon McCullum for making it interesting, though the results have gone just as they did under Joe Root three years ago – win the first Test, lose the next three.
Many thanks to Daniel Harris for doing the heavy lifting today. And to you for your company, correspondence and periodic rants about Bazball. The fifth Test isn’t for another ten days, so we can all get some sleep. Over to Ali.
With the bat, the series has belonged to Yashasvi Jaiswal. He has amassed 655 runs, almost twice as many as the next man (Shubman Gill). Jaiswal’s idea of a failure is making 37, as he did today. His series average is 94, which is what Don Bradman might have settled for if he’d been up against Ben Stokes.
Gill has 342 runs at 49 after taking a decision at 120-5 in this innings that was audacious in its way – to get ’em in singles. Just behind him are England’s buccaneering openers, Zak Crawley with 328 at 41 and Ben Duckett with 314 at 39 (full list here). Those two have done well, but the middle order have struggled and England simply haven’t made enough runs. Of their 88 individual innings, only eight have made it to 50, whereas for India it’s been 15 out of 79. In that light, it’s amazing that England still had a chance of winning the series today.
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