Yeah, yeah, go, go, easy one.” Ravindra Jadeja’s voice cut through the post-lunch hum at Old Trafford. It wasn’t a one-off. Every time he or Washington Sundar nudged a ball into a gap, Jadeja called out, loud and clear, urging his partner to run, to push, to keep the scoreboard ticking. The tone was urgent but composed. In the moment, the word ‘easy’ made perfect sense. But nothing about the bigger picture was easy. It was the start of the second session – the fourth of five India needed to survive to save the Manchester Test, and the series. Shubman Gill had just fallen for a masterful 103, minutes before the interval. And India have had a complicated relationship with collapses and breaks this series. Behind Jadeja and Washington were Shardul Thakur, three No.11s, and a hobbling Rishabh Pant with a fractured toe. There wasn’t much room for optimism if another wicket fell. But Jadeja and Washington were giving it a go. This was the defining passage of play. The first session had brought 49 runs in 26 overs – a terrific show of resistance – but both leaders of that resistance, Gill and KL Rahul, had fallen after batting for 379 and 300 minutes respectively. In contrast, the eight overs after lunch yielded 37 runs. Suddenly, England had a moving target. The more runs India added and edged into a lead, the more time England would need to get them, and the less there’d be left in the match. The draw, once a faint hope, was now being dragged into the realm of possibility. And somehow, Jadeja and Washington made it real. India won’t win their first Test series in England since 2007. But they haven’t lost it either. At least, not yet. And after spending 157.1 overs in the field and collapsing to 0 for 2 in their second innings, they batted five sessions to keep ‘The Oval’ alive. Old Trafford’s pitch held firm through five days, but this was still a different kind of defiance – a kind of self-denial modern cricket rarely demands. Ten straight hours of stillness and stubbornness. The kind that bruises. The kind that tests the will and physicality as much as the technique. Manchester 2025 will stand as a marker, a placeholder for this era of India’s Test cricket, and of the demands this format will make of those who feature. Few passages captured that better than the partnerships between Jadeja and Washington, and Gill and Rahul, who between them batted 875 balls. Even their symmetry felt deliberate, maybe even poetic. In a match that ended with the timing of the handshake drawing scrutiny, this one featured a quiet handhold across generations.. Not long ago, Gill and Rahul were competing for the same Test spot. Washington is widely seen as Jadeja’s natural successor. And here they were in Manchester, two pairs from the present and the future, each enduring through two sessions. No clash. No contradiction. Just a shared belief: to save a Test, sometimes, you have to unlearn everything you know. You’d think Rahul and Jadeja, with their years in Test cricket, had done this before. But they hadn’t – not like this. Not with nothing to gain except the chance to not lose. Before today’s 107*, Jadeja’s highest second-innings score in a match-saving effort was 32*, also against England, in Rajkot, 2016. Rahul’s 149 at The Oval in 2018 came in a hit-out-and-hope knock, a match India lost at the end of a tour India they’d fluffed. Gill and Washington, despite their first-class credentials, are unmistakably products of a generation raised on white-ball instinct, where urgency is default, and cricket balls are treated like flies to be swatted. Rahul and Jadeja have survived that shift and thrived within it, but they also carry the rhythm of an older tempo – more methodical, more meditative. That entire range of conditioning had to come together. In the series opener at Headingley and again here at Old Trafford, India’s assistant coach Sitanshu Kotak distilled it into a mantra, delivered in his calming Gujarati twang: “Session by session.” One hour at a time. One spell at a time. And each hour on the final day offered its own test: of control, of courage, of concentration. The first belonged to the captains. Ben Stokes, held together by strapping and stubbornness, bowled through bicep strain and cramps, pouring everything he had into the battle. Across from him stood Gill – hit on the fingers, then on the helmet, both off the same ball that reared off a length. He didn’t want to switch helmets because the replacement felt different and could disrupt his flow. Even with his fingers still stinging, he had conviction to press forward to the next ball, delivered onto the same spot. The battle was no longer about shot-making. It was about thresholds: physical, mental, emotional. Gill stayed tactically alert too. He refused a single that would’ve taken him closer to his century, believing the left-hander Washington was more vulnerable to the rough Liam Dawson was targeting. That hundred, his fourth of the series and the slowest of his career, eventually came after he’d spent 36 balls in the nineties and was punctuated by a raw shout of “come on.” His dismissal, on the stroke of lunch, too wasn’t a post-milestone lapse. It showed the difficulty of playing for a draw, when you can get ahead of yourself after surviving one battle. In this case, Archer came on from the more benign Brian Statham End. On the fourth afternoon, counter attacking the new ball had worked well for Gill in taking off the shine from it. Only this delivery, set up for inswing, seamed away and kissed the edge. Four down and far away from safety, Jadeja walked out with a point to prove. He had four consecutive fifties but his defining image from the series was of him being wrapped in a hug by Stokes. At Lord’s on the final day he had…

Jasprit Bumrah will take the field at Old Trafford in the fourth Test of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy, his bowling partner Mohammed Siraj said two days out from the match. Bumrah’s availability has hovered over each Test like a weather watch, shaped by a pre-series agreement that India’s pace spearhead would play only three of the five games to manage his workload. But with India trailing 1-2 and the series slipping into its decisive phase, his inclusion in Manchester feels less like a decision and more like a certainty. The nine-day gap since the finish at Lord’s on July 14 has only strengthened the case. On Monday (July 21) morning, Bumrah was in a long, animated conversation with chairman of selectors Ajit Agarkar and head coach Gautam Gambhir. Soon after, he eased into his bowling spell in the nets: shorter than his usual tune-ups, before picking up the bat for a hit. Rain is forecast on three of the five days at Old Trafford, raising the outside chance that his bowling load may be lighter than usual. That, in turn, could open the door for him to play again at The Oval, where the final Test begins on July 31, just three days after this one ends. But that’s a conversation for another day. India’s attack from Lord’s could still likely see one change, with Akash Deep nursing a groin concern. The Bengal seamer, who impressed with a ten-wicket haul in Birmingham, bowled off a shortened run-up during the main group session but didn’t take part in the nets thereafter. India are expected to give him another 24 hours before making a final call, but contingency plans are already in motion. To reinforce an increasingly beleaguered pace unit, 24-year-old Anshul Kamboj has been drafted into the squad. The Haryana quick, with 79 wickets at an average of 22.88 in 24 first-class games, was among the more promising performers for India ‘A’ against the England Lions last month, picking up five wickets across two matches. He arrived in Manchester only on Sunday, but there was little time to settle: Kamboj was soon steaming in with the new ball in the nets, under the watchful eyes of Gautam Gambhir and bowling coach Morne Morkel. Yet standing between Kamboj and a debut could be Prasidh Krishna, who played the first two Tests of the series. His numbers – 5.33 runs per over – don’t flatter him, but the context matters. A particularly expensive spell came in Birmingham, when captain Shubman Gill asked for short-pitched bowling in a bid to force a breakthrough. Prasidh was back at his best in the Old Trafford nets, troubling Gill, Rishabh Pant, and Sai Sudharsan with his rhythm and lift. Amid the vortex of injury concerns, there was one encouraging sight: Rishabh Pant appeared to have largely moved past the niggle that had prevented him from keeping for most of the Lord’s Test. India’s vice-captain kept wickets during a slip-catching drill and batted without visible discomfort. Only deliveries that climbed sharply and struck high on the splice seemed to cause him any trouble. Still, if there are doubts over his ability to keep for five days, India may be tempted to slot in Dhruv Jurel as a replacement for the ruled-out Nitish Reddy. But if Pant is cleared to resume keeping duties, that frees up a spot for Sai Sudharsan, the left-hander who spent quality time in the nets and remains hungry to build on his debut at Headingley.

Kate Cross, in the pre-match press conference, called her head coach Charlotte Edwards the ‘Queen of Mumbai (Indians)’ before quickly correcting it to designate the title to Harmanpreet Kaur instead. Lottie (Edwards), meanwhile, got ‘Queen of England cricket’. Fitting, both of those. Their three-year alliance at MI, alongside Nat Sciver-Brunt as the team vice-captain, has yielded two titles. As much as franchise culture has helped blur the barriers and brought the best of the best to work in harmony, that MI brain-trust is now firmly split in two opposing camps. Two of the strongest contenders to Australia’s ODI throne. And just before the focus turns to the impending World Cup in under three months’ time back home, both India and England are on their final approach. The preceding five-match T20I series that India won 3-2 proved more than just a recce for the next T20 World Cup due to be played in the UK next year. In a season where most of India’s first-choice bowlers and/or bowling-allrounders have been invariably out injured, the reserves have grabbed their opportunities with both hands to present the team management with what Harmanpreet calls a ‘happy headache’. Be it the re-called Sneh Rana, who in her third wind was the Player of the Tournament in the ODI tri-series in Sri Lanka on India comeback, or the 20-year-old Shree Charani, who clinched the same honour in her debut outing last week after being picked off her maiden WPL season. Radha Yadav wasn’t even in the reckoning before being brought on as an injury replacement, and has put on display a fine all-round show across the three departments. Amanjot Kaur has stepped up admirably to fill in the shoes of Pooja Vastrakar, including occasionally sharing the new-ball duties in lieu of Arundhati Reddy or Kranti Goud – all three of them earning their stripes through WPL. This new-look bowling attack has no doubt given India a sense of a greater depth of talent pool, but is largely untested and will face a much stiffer test in the 50-over format against England. Over in the batting department, five of India’s top-seven pick themselves lending not just depth but also clarity of roles that hasn’t always been the case in the shortest format. But barring in Australia, they haven’t been as strongly challenged this season as they can now expect from England. They do have the luxury of another home series, against Australia no less, in preparation for the World Cup but now would be the ideal time to test and settle their combinations. While the batting does appear settled, wunderkind Shafali Verma’s return-to-form in T20Is is another happy headache Inda is embracing. In her absence, Pratika Rawal claimed the opener’s slot with a mighty impressive average of 63.80 in her nascent 11-match ODI career while Harleen Deol made the no. 3 spot her own with an average of nearly 40 since her India comeback last December – including a career-best 115 at home and a 100* while chasing in the 50-over warm-up game on this tour. Verma may currently not be a part of this assignment, but the backing she has recently received from head coach Amol Muzumdar can breed a healthy competition between Rawal and Deol for the coveted one-down spot eventually should the Haryana opener be genuinely and unanimously on the management’s radar for a World Cup berth. England, on the other hand, have a point to prove. Despite narrowly pulling back two games of the T20I series, the scoreline still read 2-3 in favour of India in what was the first stiff competition since the dawn of the NSB-Edwards era. The hurt of a group-stage exit from the 2024 T20 World Cup brought a complete overhaul of the think-tank with both white-ball World Cups due in under 12 months. It was all hunky-dory when they brushed aside the West Indies since the changeover, but India caught them off-guard. Edwards has already conceded that India have pushed them hard in the T20Is and – in their final rubber before the marquee event – she doesn’t expect any of that to change come 50-overs cricket. When: Wednesday, July 16 at 5:30 PM IST | 1 PM Local Where: The Rose Bowl, Southampton What to expect: The pitch may remain under covers on match-eve due to the anticipated showers but the weather is expected to clear out by match day. While it’s generally a high-scoring ground, in the only WODI played at the Rose Bowl in Southampton in the last two years the wicket favoured spinners (11 wickets) more than pacers (3 wickets). Team News England: Regular skipper Nat Sciver-Brunt returns after missing the latter half of the T20I series with a groin injury. Probable XI:Tammy Beaumont, Amy Jones (wk), Maia Bouchier/Emma Lamb, Nat Sciver-Brunt (C), Sophia Dunkley, Alice Capsey, Charlie Dean, Kate Cross, Sophie Ecclestone, Lauren Filer, Lauren Bell India: Despite opting for no training on the eve of the ODI series opener, the visitors have a fully fit and available squad to pick from. Probable XI: Smriti Mandhana, Pratika Rawal, Harleen Deol, Harmanpreet Kaur (C), Jemimah Rodrigues, Richa Ghosh (wk), Deepti Sharma, Amanjot Kaur, Sneh Rana, Arundhati Reddy, Shree Charani Did you know? – Smriti Mandhana is 15 runs away from overtaking Tammy Beaumont (4487 – ranked 10th) and entering the top-10 of all-time highest run-getters in the format – Harmanpreet Kaur needs 57 runs to enter the 4000-run club in the format. She’ll become only the third Indian to do so, after Mithali Raj and Mandhana – Nat Sciver-Brunt is 68 runs away from reaching the 4000-run club in ODIs, and she’ll become the sixth English woman to do so.- Southampton has hosted just three Women’s ODIs. England beat India 2-0 in 2006, and the hosts lost to Australia in 2023 by three runs chasing 283. What they said: “In the last couple of years, batting-wise, our primary target has been to score 300-plus… because it gives a little cushioning to the bowlers….

Cricket, once the pride of our region and the heartbeat of our people, is being quietly strangled – not by a lack of talent or fan support, but by leadership structures so deeply flawed they no longer serve the game. Across several regional cricket boards, governance has collapsed into something more dangerous than incompetence: entitlement without accountability. Where else in public life can you fail repeatedly, spend public funds with zero oversight, produce embarrassing results and still keep your job, year after year? In cricket administration, failure is not only tolerated; it is protected and even rewarded. Board members pay themselves what they want, select players based on personal loyalty rather than merit, and treat national team results as irrelevant. Whether we win, lose, or are completely humiliated on the international stage, the outcome is the same: they stay in power. In any other institution – parliament, business, education, civil society – this kind of dysfunction would trigger resignations or be met with external intervention. But in cricket? There is no consequence. Just silence, blame-shifting, and a press release. And when the public dares to ask: “Where is the plan?” the answer is often a hastily stitched-together program meant to score headlines, not results. There is no proper, well-thought-out development plan. No long-term structure. No sustainable systems. Just tokenism, PR, and smoke screens. It’s not progress; they’re just buying time. Fans are not fooled. They’ve walked away from the sport in droves, not with protest, but with silence. And while the passion fades from the stands and the grassroots, those in charge cling to their positions, immune to results and deaf to criticism. In this broken system, you don’t need to be qualified to serve. You don’t need experience in governance, sports management, or even cricket. You just need to belong to the right circle. Loyalty replaces merit. Protectionism replaces performance. “Selection is subjective,” they claim. But that’s just code for “we choose who we want.” Promising young players are sidelined, veterans discarded, and anyone who dares question the system is punished. Alternative views are met not with reform, but with exclusion or punishment! And when we suffer defeats – not by a few runs, but crushing losses – there’s no introspection, no accountability. No one steps aside. The same faces remain, making the same excuses, drawing from the same failed playbook. More recently, the situation has gone from bad to worse. A heart-wrenching loss to Australia – yet another in a string of heavy defeats – was followed by an all-time low, as our team was bowled out for a paltry 27 runs, the second-lowest score in the entire history of Test cricket. That is not only disastrous, it is disheartening and sad. And yet, somehow, we’re expected to carry on as if this is normal. It is not. These are the consequences of a broken system, one that no longer produces world-class players, but instead exposes them unprepared to the world stage. When anyone, be it former players, concerned citizens, or even governments, calls for change, the response is predictable: “Political interference.” Yet these same boards have no issue using public funds to defend themselves, fund court battles, and silence critics, all while player development and grassroots investment are left to decay. Worse still, if a player is accused of misconduct, swift action is taken: investigation, suspension, expulsion. But when administrators face allegations of wrongdoing? Silence. Protection. Legal walls built using the very resources meant to grow the game. Let’s be absolutely clear: many regional cricket boards now behave like laws unto themselves. And what’s even more disturbing is the role of sponsors and government agencies who continue to provide substantial funding and cover, despite knowing the truth. Some take action-terminating partnerships after independent audits expose the rot but fail to follow through with accountability. Instead of demanding structural change, they allow the same administrators to move on, scot-free, to other unsuspecting sponsors, with impunity. In my respectful view, the enablers are more guilty of misconduct than those who actually commit the alleged wrongdoings. Recently, Darren Sammy, who was appointed head coach of the West Indies team, has come under fire. But to place the blame squarely on his shoulders is not only unfair, it’s a red herring that distracts from the much bigger, systemic failures that have plagued West Indies cricket for more than two decades. The Territorial Boards, where player preparation and development begins, have failed us miserably. Our players are effectively learning on the job, because they are not being properly prepared at home. At a regional cricket symposium held two years ago, I made it clear: Governments must take bold, legislative steps to reform the governance of cricket. This starts with a complete overhaul of the Acts of Parliament that govern the sport. Just imagine: some boards have as many as 47 members and not one cricketer among them. That’s the equivalent of a doctors’ association with no doctors, or a legal council with no lawyers. Until we stop pointing fingers in the wrong direction and start holding those truly responsible to account, we are wasting precious time. At this rate, true recovery will take 20 years – if it starts at all. The only way forward is through legislative action. We need a complete overhaul of the structures that shield poor governance. The law must mandate greater transparency, accountability, and independent oversight, with clear mechanisms to hold administrators responsible for their actions, in line with international best practices. Without those reforms, without bold political and public will, we remain trapped in a cycle of decline. Still fed the illusion: “We’re rebuilding. We’ll be back.” But how? With no vision? No accountability? No shame? This is no longer just mismanagement. It is not merely a lack of competence.It is betrayal. Unless the entire structure is dismantled and rebuilt on merit, integrity, and purpose, we are not on our way back to the top of world cricket.We are digging ourselves deeper into irrelevance.And those who…