Not all doom and gloom: India almost had England at Headingley

Headingley was a weird Test. India dominated large chunks of it with bat and ball, but still lost. Despite the somewhat-deserved flak the Indian bowlers are getting, they consistently created more chances than England's bowlers did. India lost ten wickets to just 108 false shots in the first innings and 92 in the second; England lost ten and five wickets in 137 and 113 false shots.

Often such losses can be attributed to luck, but India weren't unlucky either. At least not unlucky in the way their false shots went to hand at an inordinate rate as it did during the 36 all out in Adelaide.

Headingley wasn't a typical Bazball Test. The Bazball philosophy is to play more shots against good balls, trusting a combination of their batters' attacking qualities and the new flat pitches in England that don't deteriorate. The surfaces at Headingley just keep getting better for batting. Other teams bat conventionally and play fewer shots to good balls. England's taller bowlers have tended to bash the good lengths and draw more out of the pitches than the opposition.

During the Bazball era, England's batting average and strike rate on false shots have usually been better than their opponents in that match. That wasn't the case at Headingley, where India averaged more and scored quicker on false shots in the first innings. The difference would have been bigger if India had held even half of their catches.

This is not to decry dropped catches, but to suggest India had England. They dragged England out of familiar territory largely because their attack lacked pace and experience. England's bowlers were unable to, in Stuart Broad's succinct words, hold length or bowl in disconcerting areas. In the first innings, their fast bowlers bowled just 197 balls in the 6-8m band in 86 overs; India put 203 balls there in 77.4 overs. India drew more average seam from good length than England, although at around 0.6 degrees it didn't consistently trouble the batters.

The England seamers did have better average and strike rate from these good-length balls, but it is not attributable to them getting more out of the pitch from there. The numbers are also influenced by the lopsided dropping of catches, which is not likely to repeat itself.

The one thing England were able to do better was draw more from the aggressive 5-6m length. They were able to swing the fuller ball more, even though the seam movement remained negligible for both sides.

India can certainly improve. With his height, Prasidh Krishna will want to hit the good-length zone more often than he did, but as a comparison, India bowled more good balls and created more opportunities than England did.

The bad periods for India at Headingley, however, proved to be catastrophic. If they had been at regular efficiency in terms of lower-order runs or catches - six plus two quarter chances is the most any side has spilled in a Test in England in the last 20 years - the worst result for India would have been a draw.

So while India should look at playing a wicket-taking bowler in place of Shardul Thakur - head coach Gautam Gambhir called him a bowling allrounder - in the second Test at Edgbaston, they need to tell themselves they were better for large portions of the first Test and that they can do it again. The England bowling attack was ordinary and adding an undercooked Jofra Archer is a gamble.

India have to back themselves to get into good positions with the bat again, and be more ruthless if they do. The main job is to get into those positions again. In the Tests Jasprit Bumrah plays, the bowling will only get better. The inexperienced Prasidh showed significant improvement over five days at Headingley. Mohammed Siraj can't continue being unlucky for too long. Kuldeep Yadav, Akash Deep or Arshdeep Singh will be an improvement over Thakur. The matches without Bumrah will be a challenge, but they should all individually get better by then, provided Bumrah plays the Edgbaston Test, which starts next Wednesday. One of the improvements they will need to make is to bowl better lines, according to the field, and keep England under 4.5 an over.

The Headingley defeat was galling, the kind that can be difficult to recover from, but India have the batting to get back into positions they can dominate from. Their bowling is not much behind England in terms of quality and experience.