ON THE AFTERNOON of 3 February, in Visakhapatnam, on the third day of the second match of a Test series between India and England, Jasprit Bumrah steamed in to bowl. The visitors stood at 114 for 2, chasing the Indian first-innings total of 396. England were scoring at a fast clip, in keeping with their creed of Bazball, a hyper-aggressive mode of playing Test cricket conjured up by their coach, Brendon McCullum.
As Bumrah sought a breakthrough, the significance of the recent past dwarfed the present. The previous week, during the series’ first Test in Hyderabad, England had produced a dramatic win from behind, adding to the mythology surrounding Bazball. The philosophy, faced with its sternest Test yet in formidable Indian conditions, had improbably succeeded at the first instance.
Now, on a typically flat Indian pitch, with an older ball in his palm, Bumrah produced a spell of fast bowling for the ages. Joe Root, the premier English batter, was caught behind in the slips. Then came the moment that, in hindsight, could be seen as series-defining.
The batter in the Andhra sun was Ollie Pope, who had led the comeback in the Hyderabad Test with a valiant 196, a performance that will forever rank as one of the greatest innings by a foreign player on Indian soil. In Visakhapatnam, Pope had breezed to a confident 23 and was looking ominous, when Bumrah produced an otherworldly yorker that left Pope’s stumps splayed in a heap. Pope never recovered from the blow, and neither did England. India rattled off a streak of wins to take the series 4-1.