A fitting 2000th Test
Two top-quality sides, gripping sub-plots, memorable milestones, a sell-out crowd and a fine finish - the 2000th installment of Test cricket did not disappoint Tom Fordyce, who narrates the final day on his BBC blog .
Nitin Sundar
25-Feb-2013
Two top-quality sides, gripping sub-plots, memorable milestones, a sell-out crowd and a fine finish - the 2000th installment of Test cricket did not disappoint Tom Fordyce, who narrates the final day on his BBC blog.
After four days of delightful ding-dong between the best two teams in the world came a denouement that was as perfect a commemorative gift as five-day cricket could hope to receive: thrills and spills from first delivery to last, a final-session triumph conjured from bowling excellence and an atmosphere that mixed febrile and fiesta to intoxicating effect.
The record turnout for the final day was unprecedented, but what struck the Daily Telegraph's Angus Fraser the most was the diversity and age of the people who queued up.
As this Test has gone on, the number of India supporters in attendance has increased. It appears as though large numbers of tickets only really become available to the general public towards the end of the match. An indicator of the number of Indian fans in the ground can be gauged by the roar that follows India taking a wicket or hitting a four. On Sunday it was loud, yesterday, when Tendulkar walked out to bat, we could have been playing in Mumbai.
In the Daily Mail, Lawrence Booth declares "the effect of the sport of an enthralling five days is incalculable".
Every day offered a fresh morsel. On Thursday, there was England’s stoic resistance against the swinging ball, and on Friday the renewed swagger of Kevin Pietersen. Saturday produced a back-to-basics hundred from Rahul Dravid — the wrong Indian maybe, but masterful stuff nonetheless. On Sunday it was the turn of Ishant Sharma and Matt Prior, and on the final day it was one vignette after another. If Test cricket is dead, long live Test cricket.
Also in the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain writes that while England raised their game for the big occasion, India did the exact opposite.
Everything that England have done this summer has been geared towards making sure their players are as ready as possible for this Test series, including Andrew Strauss playing at Taunton and Stuart Broad playing for Notts. In contrast, India expected their top strike bowler in Zaheer Khan and their premier batsman in Sachin Tendulkar to rock up without playing a Test since January and just have a bit of a hit and giggle against Somerset before the big one. They did not help themselves.
The Daily Telegraph's Simon Hughes says the English bowling performance was so good that "a long hop was as rare as a spare ticket".
Jimmy Anderson was the star on Monday, but they all played their part. It was a Chinese water torture sort of approach, the drip, drip, drip of sustained perseverance administering a lingering death.
It may have not been the biggest wicket of the day, but the Independent's James Lawton singles out MS Dhoni's dismissal after tea as the moment when an ascendant English team may have broken the will and heart of Indian cricket.
You might say that Dhoni's fall was not so significant because the great ageing men, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and the Little Master himself, Sachin Tendulkar, had all gone before him. But if they are cricketers for the ages, it is Dhoni who best represents the hard edge of today's big-money game.
Nitin Sundar is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo