Having won the first Test by successfully surpassing a target of 371 in Leeds, England will attempt to win the last and with it the series by chasing 374 at the Oval . If the statisticians and bookmakers don’t fancy their chances the team themselves are not just confident but “chilled” about the task they face on day four.
“It is a replay from Headingley,” said Josh Tongue. “It will be a great day of cricket and a great day for us if we get the runs. How we play as a batting unit is very positive and very exciting. The batting we’ve got, I can’t see why we can’t give it a good go. We’re pretty chilled. Not much overthinking about it. I don’t see why we can’t chase down these runs.”
England scored 50 of them across the final session on Saturday before Mohammed Siraj bowled Zak Crawley with the last ball of the day, giving the tourists a lift in their pursuit of a win that would tie the series at 2-2.
“We are really confident,” said their second-innings centurion, Yashasvi Jaiswal. “We just need to focus on our process and keep bowling in the right areas. That’s what we are thinking. There’s always movement in the wicket, swing movement and seam movement. It’s not that easy to bat.”
With Chris Woakes out of action because of the shoulder injury he sustained on the opening day, England’s three remaining seamers had to bear an outsized burden across India’s second innings. Tongue took five wickets in his 30 overs to finish the series with 19 – England’s best tally, and from only three games – while Gus Atkinson and Jamie Overton bowled 27 and 22 respectively.
“It was obviously going to be tough for us bowlers but I thought we stuck at it very well,” Tongue said. “I feel like sometimes I didn’t bowl as best as I could, especially on the first day here, but I’m obviously very chuffed to get the wickets.”
Jaiswal’s 118 was the 19th century of a series that has seen plenty of extraordinary batting but the only one so far in this match, while he shared a partnership of 107 – again the only one in this game to reach triple figures – with India’s nightwatchman, Akash Deep, who scored 66 and was, in Tongue’s words, “obviously frustrating”.
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“He played really well, playing shots and defending very well. I was just thinking about how we can build the partnership as long as we can,” Jaiswal said. “So we were enjoying that, and we were having good fun.
“It’s very important for all of us that we keep pushing ourselves and this was our last innings here. I needed to keep pushing. My mentality is always like that: think positive and go for my shots – but if the situation demands something else I will enjoy that as well. Always the mentality is to go out there and fight it out and enjoy. Because in the end, I tell myself that it’s a game, and we need to enjoy it. That is very important. We should have fun.”
