Josh Tongue’s first ball of this fifth Test at The Oval travelled so far down the off-side, it was heading for Lord’s by the time it hit the boundary rope for five wides. A moment later, he sent the ball off in the direction of Eden Gardens for five more. It was one of the worst overs you’re likely to see in a Test match: India hit a solitary single and jumped from 18-1 to 30-1. Tongue was unplayable, just not in the way he might have imagined.
The morning’s conditions had seemed like a bowler’s paradise, on an unpredictable green pitch under skies so murky that groundstaff switched on the floodlights before midday. Shubman Gill lost India’s 15th toss in a row in all formats – a feat with a probability of 1 in 32,768 – and England’s stand-in captain Ollie Pope naturally elected to field.
