Five things we learnt from India's fourth Test win

Sport360 staff 21:09 12/12/2016
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  • The Indian team does a lap of honour after their series win.

    India defeated England by an innings and 36 runs to take an unassailable 3-0 lead in the five-Test series against England with one Test still to play.

    This was India’s first Test series win over England in eight years, which makes it even sweeter for the hosts.

    Here, we look at the five things we learnt from the fourth Test at Mumbai.

    KOHLI SHOWS HIS CLASS ONCE AGAIN

    Virat Kohli is currently one of the best batsmen in world cricket and he proved that yet again with a brilliant knock of 235. With this innings, Kohli now has an astonishing 640 runs in this series at an average of 128.

    KOHLI IN 2016 ACROSS ALL FORMATS

    • Matches: 36
    • Runs: 2580
    • Average: 88.96
    • Highest Score: 235

    On a turning track, the Indian skipper showed the right balance between attack and defence as he went on record his career-best score. In fact, 235 is also now the highest score in an innings by any Indian captain in international cricket.

    Kohli is now the leading run-scorer across all formats of international cricket in 2016 and is in with a chance to equal Michael Clarke’s record (4) of most double centuries in a calendar year.

    VIJAY COMES BACK TO FORM

    There were a lot of questions raised about Murali Vijay’s poor form before the Mumbai Test. He had an average of just 27.82 in the previous 11 Tests, despite being aided by a century in the first match of this series at Rajkot.

    Despite those numbers, coach Anil Kumble vociferously supported him ahead of the fourth Test. And Vijay proved Kumble right, with a magnificent century when India needed it the most.

    The Tamil Nadu opener was one of India’s most consistent batsmen during their run of away Test matches in 2014 and his return to form will be a big relief to the Indian team.

    INDIAN SPINNERS CONTINUE TO CONTRIBUTE WITH BAT AND BALL

    Despite Kohli’s incredible form, there is not much doubt that Ravichandran Ashwin is India’s biggest match-winner in Test cricket currently and he showed us why with a 12-wicket haul in Mumbai.

    In total, the Indian spin trio of Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, and Jayant Yadav accounted for 19 out of the 20 English wickets to fall in the Test.

    If their efforts with the ball weren’t enough, the trio have made some big contributions with the bat as well. In Mumbai, it was Yadav’s turn as he notched up a maiden Test century, despite coming into bat at number nine.

    ENGLISH SPINNERS SIMPLY NOT GOOD ENOUGH

    The big talking point before the tour started was if the English spinners would be good enough to trouble the Indian batsmen. Well, if you are an English fan, you wouldn’t be best pleased with the result.

    Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali have looked good in patches, but never have seemed to have enough quality to produce a performance like Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar did in 2012. In Mumbai, they combined for 108.3 overs – picking up six wickets while conceding 366 runs.

    What hasn’t also helped is England’s horrid team selection as the visitors dropped a spinner to play four quicks on a Wankhede surface, which assisted spin the most among all the pitches in the series so far.

    ANDERSON’S COMMENTS ON KOHLI

    At the end of the fourth day, English fast bowler James Anderson made some comments that did not go well with Indian cricketers and fans alike. Anderson suggested that Kohli hadn’t changed his technique much since his disastrous tour to England in 2014 and that the Indian captain’s faults couldn’t be exposed here due to the pitches.

    Anderson might have a point, considering it’s almost impossible to find a better batsman against spin right now than Kohli. But the Burnley-born pacer attributing Kohli’s failures two years ago to a failure in technique is probably incorrect.

    In 2014, Kohli was having a terrible time with the bat after a brilliant effort at the World T20. In the IPL that had followed, the Royal Challengers Bangalore [RCB] captain had scored 359 runs at an average of 27.61 and a strike-rate of 122.10 – by far, his worst season since IPL 2009, when he was a 20-year-old.

    Kohli had failed to address the lack of form before the tour to England, with him averaging an embarrassing 13.40 in the five-Test series.

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