There is nothing quite like the against‑the‑odds comeback, no sporting accomplishment as compelling. Of course it helps – indeed, it is essential – that they are so unusual. It is their rarity, the hard work, inspiration and liberal seasoning of good fortune that we know is required to make them happen, that makes them taste so sweet. Yet around the world and across the pitch in Hyderabad, as shadows lengthened and the odds of an England win shortened, Test cricket was suddenly crowded with them.
England’s was one of the great comebacks in the history of the format, and also perhaps the second best of a day when cricket’s two greatest juggernauts simultaneously faltered. England started slicing through India just as West Indies were wrapping up their stunning demolition of Australia in Brisbane, and the sport became one of slack jaws, spinning heads and breathless tweets. In Hyderabad the drama never faltered as the English, 190 behind after being profoundly outclassed in the first innings, took – with an uncertain grip, sweaty palms and a discernible tremor – control of the match.
They were eventually carried to victory by a stunning seven-wicket haul from Tom Hartley, a young spin bowler making his first Test appearance. His was a vanishingly rare achievement – he became the second bowler this century to take more than six wickets in the second innings of their debut, and the first to do so in a winning cause – yet it was perhaps overshadowed by Shamar Joseph, the even younger Guyanese fast bowler making his second Test appearance who took seven wickets in the dismantling of the Australians at the Gabba.
It was a day of the most glorious long‑distance one-upmanship and in this respect, remarkably, there are a couple of people who might know how Hartley feels. Nearly 30 years had passed since a bowler took more than six wickets in the last innings to win a Test on debut but the last time it happened it happened twice, Pakistan’s Mohammad Zahid taking seven against New Zealand and South Africa’s Lance Klusener eight to beat India, both on 1 December 1996.
This was the 106th time India had led their opponents by 100 or more runs after the opening innings of a home Test and the first of those games they have lost, testament to the ability Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes have instilled in this side to achieve the unimaginable. But if anything Tom Hartley’s comeback was more remarkable than his team’s.
On Thursday India scored a six off his first ball, another off his fifth, and he was all but written off as a Test bowler inside his first hour in the role. But three days after shipping 63 in his first nine overs without taking a wicket he conceded 62 in 26.2 and took seven, dismissing four of India’s top five, coming back to polish off the tail and transforming himself in the space of four glorious hours from liability to legend.
Hartley shows few emotions on the field, not an unhelpful characteristic given the way his game panned out, and even having taken a central role in this historic victory, when he stepped forward to be interviewed on television he appeared so dour that Murali Kartik’s first request was for him to “please, flash your smile”.
This must have been an overwhelming and surely also a draining experience: Hartley was involved in almost all of an extended day’s play, starting it by sharing with Ollie Pope a stand of 80 for the eighth wicket. Of those he scored 34 vital, unshowy runs, all the while studying the pitch for useful pointers. He was eventually bowled by a Ravichandran Ashwin delivery that kept low; a few hours later Ashwin was stumped after one of his own did likewise, just another kind of comeback in a day full of them.
Elsewhere Ollie Pope, playing for the first time after six months out with a dislocated shoulder, produced the innings of his life, a six‑hour, two‑day epic – “I think I got a bit lucky,” he said later – and then, instead of spending a while cooling down with his feet up, he strapped his helmet back on and took two stunning short catches in three balls to set England on their way.
Ben Stokes, less than two months after knee surgery, came up with an astonishing if not entirely atypical piece of athleticism and invention in the field to run out Ravindra Jadeja. Jack Leach, in his first match after nearly eight months recuperating from a stress fracture of the back and having ended day two with his left leg heavily strapped to combat a “pretty serious” knee injury, not only took the field but bowled 10 overs and took the wicket of Shreyas Iyer, India’s last specialist batter.
Asked at the end of play about life in this England side, Hartley said: “There’s never a dull moment, that’s the Stokes way.” He might barely know this team, and for the matter this format, but he seems to have got the measure of it.
