Time for England’s lower orders to rise up

Their advantage at the bottom of the order could be decisive in the series, as it was at Lord’s where India’s lower order weren’t quite good enough to keep Ravindra Jadeja company long enough to win it. In the first three Tests, England’s tail has 215 runs to India’s 122, for one fewer dismissal.

The gap is probably going to widen because Liam Dawson is in for the injured Shoaib Bashir and gives England unprecedented strength in the lower order. Dawson has 18 first-class centuries and averages more than 35 with the bat. Chris Woakes averages 31, Brydon Carse 29 and Jofra Archer 22. By contrast, India have Shardul Thakur (20), Anshul Kamboj (16), Jasprit Bumrah (8) and Mohammed Siraj (7). Only the thresher shark or the giraffe has a longer tail than that.

There have been good teams with long tails, the West Indies in the 1980s had a great one. They didn’t get many runs out of Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Colin Croft. Later on, Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose didn’t bat to any great effect. The Indian team of the late 1990s relied on Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman at the top and needed to as Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Venkatash Prasad and Zaheer Khan didn’t offer much resistance. The spin-dominated Indian team of the 1970s had a set of duffers (Bishan Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar and Srinivas Venkataraghavan) at the bottom.

More often, a long tail is a leading indicator of a poor side. Perhaps the most notoriously comical long tail was Andrew Caddick, Alan Mullally, Phil Tufnell and Ed Giddins against New Zealand at the Oval in 1999. New Zealand’s lower order contributed 183 runs to England’s 27. It mattered too. New Zealand won the game by 83 runs.

Ever since Duncan Fletcher, coach from 1999 to 2007, England have sought to select a team that didn’t fold five wickets down. Monty Panesar and Jimmy Anderson survived 11 overs to save a Test against Australia in 2009. One-day cricket in its various guises has put all-rounders at a premium and it’s starting to creep into Tests. In the 1950s, batsmen Nos 8 to 11 averaged 14.05. Between 2010 and 2020 the average was more than 18. That said, England have not been that good at the bottom of the order lately. In the last iteration of the World Test Championship, New Zealand got an average 22 runs from each lower order batsman. England got 13. Only Sri Lanka were worse.

No longer. Dawson, Woakes, Carse and Archer are a cut above and the batting would be even better if Gus Atkinson, who has a Test hundred at Lord’s, replaced Archer at No 11. The highest run scorers at 8-11 for England are Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann, Fred Trueman and Derek Underwood. Against India at Old Trafford, the last four wickets put on an emphatic 154. If they can bowl well enough to stay in the side, they can beat the batting records. They might also win England the series.

Photograph by Clive Mason/Getty