KING KOHLI HAS HIS MIDAS TEST

I SAID at the start of the fifth day that it was going to be a big test of Virat Kohli’s captaincy — and he passed with flying colours.

That Oval pitch offered very little for the seamers and only a bit of rough for Ravindra Jadeja’s left-arm spin. But somehow he manufactured 10 English wickets on the last day.

Every bowling change worked and so did every tweak to the field. and when he took the second new ball after tea, it produced a wicket straight away, with Umesh Yadav bowling Craig Overton.

One way or another, this was Kohli’s Midas Test. Everything he touched turned to gold, and India are now one game away from a famous series victory, not long after beating australia in their own backyard.

Even the non-selection of Ravichandran ashwin, the top-ranked spinner in Test cricket, became irrelevant. People said India would miss him. Kohli replied: ‘No, we won’t. I’m backing our seamers to do the job.’ and he was right.

Jimmy anderson had told me there was nothing in the pitch for the seamers on the fourth day, and no lateral movement, so what did Jasprit Bumrah do yesterday? He took the pitch out of the equation by bowling bouncers and yorkers. That was a brilliant spell between lunch and tea when he got rid of Ollie Pope and Jonny Bairstow and it decided the Test.

Crucially, India got it reversing, and when you have bowlers such as Bumrah, Yadav, Mohammed siraj and even shardul Thakur in your attack, that is going to be a handful for anyone.

Kohli also used Jadeja cleverly in a way that Joe Root failed to do with Moeen ali on the fourth day. By keeping his spinner on at one end, India’s captain could rotate the quicks at the other, using them in short bursts and keeping them fresh. By ignoring Moeen, Root bowled his seamers into the ground, with possible consequences for the fifth Test at Old Trafford.

Jadeja performed another key function aside from the wickets of Haseeb Hameed and Moeen. He was landing the ball in the rough outside the right-hander’s leg stump. That created the conditions for reverse-swing, as it allowed India to keep one side rough and the other side smooth.

Over the first few days, with the Oval’s lush outfield, neither side could really get it to reverse, and that cost England on the fourth day. But once India got the ball moving on the last afternoon, they were irresistible.

I can’t be too critical of England’s batting. It does look like another collapse and going from 100 without loss to 147 for six does not look clever. But sometimes you have to give credit to the opposition and Bumrah’s bowling in particular. We forget sometimes that the opposition are allowed to play well too. and that was a very promising opening partnership between Hameed and Rory Burns.

But you shouldn’t take anything away from the resolve India showed. On that first day, after Root had stuck them in under cloudy skies, they were 127 for seven, until Thakur hit the first of his two fifties. That’s a good lesson. despite England having the better of the conditions, India stuck at it.

England, by contrast, just weren’t ruthless enough. Their catching has been shaky for a while now, and they can’t keep having to create 26 chances in each Test because the blokes in the slips are dropping too many.

and even though they recovered from 62 for five in the first innings to reach 291, they could have got more, especially when Pope and Moeen were going so well.

What they will have learned from this Test is that a lack of ruthlessness earlier in the game can come back to haunt you. The mistakes seem small at the time, but they all add up. It’s up to England to eradicate them.

Now their challenge is to pick their chins up and square the series at Manchester. The series has shown both teams can be vulnerable. If England get their act together, they can still salvage something from a difficult summer.