10 March,2024 07:04 AM IST | Dharamsala | R Kaushik
The Indian team with the winner’s trophy at Dharamsala on Saturday. Pic/PTI
India's dominance was overwhelming, England's surrender abject as the fifth and final Test hurtled to a dramatic denouement at the HPCA Stadium. The third day is generally considered the moving day, but Saturday was much more than that. India completed a commanding innings-and-64-run rout after bowling England out for 195 to secure the series 4-1 and purge the memories of a disappointing 28-run loss in the lung-opener in Hyderabad.
An action-packed day which saw James Anderson become the first paceman to take 700 Test wickets and R Ashwin join the celebrated trio of Muttiah Muralitharan, Shane Warne and Anil Kumble as the only bowlers to take five-fors in their respective 100th Tests was fittingly brought to a close by Kuldeep Yadav, the hero on the opening day with a five-wicket haul. Kuldeep dismissed Joe Root, who offered the lone pocket of resistance in the England second innings, to a catch at long-on by Jasprit Bumrah, standing in as captain for Rohit Sharma, who sat out the English capitulation with a stiff back.
India's first innings had lasted just 18 minutes in the morning, ending at 477. During that short passage, Anderson had Kuldeep caught behind, gatecrashing into the Murali-Warne 700 Club - fantastic for a 41-year-old - and the impressive Shoaib Bashir picked up his second five-wicket haul of the series.
All this left England needing 259 to avoid an innings defeat, a tall order given everything that had unfolded in the last three and a half Tests. Whether they could summon the fortitude to make a fist of it was the big question. The answer, it turned out, was an emphatic no.
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Operating with the new ball for the second second-innings in succession, Ashwin broke the English resistance right at the start, evicting Ben Duckett with his fifth delivery, having Zak Crawley caught smartly at leg-slip by Sarfaraz Khan for a 16-ball blob and forcing Ollie Pope, determined not to leave his crease after his first-innings misadventure against Kuldeep, to top-edge a sweep behind square.
Jonny Bairstow arrived in a blaze of fours and sixes until his old nemesis, Kuldeep, trapped him in front and England skipper Ben Stokes, who has had a forgettable tour with the bat, was bowled off the last ball before stumps, Ashwin picking up the left-hander for the 13th time in Tests. With the deficit not even halfway lopped off, the major point of interest was whether England would hold fort long enough for BCCI secretary Jay Shah to arrive at the venue for the presentation ceremony.
They did, but only just, thanks to a brisk 48-run alliance for the ninth wicket between Root and Bashir, after Bumrah had showed his class with the sticks of Tom Hartley and Mark Wood in three deliveries. Root played several pleasing strokes in a belated return to form, but it was too little, and way too late.
Brief scores
England 218 & 195 (J Root 84, J Bairstow 39; R Ashwin 5-77, J Bumrah 2-38, K Yadav 2-40) lost to India 477 (S Gill 110, R Sharma 103, D Padikkal 65, S Khan 56, K Yadav 30; S Bashir 5-173, J Anderson 2-60) by an innings and 64 runs
