In a thrilling display of cricket prowess, India secured a nail-biting five-wicket victory against England in the fourth Test match, thereby sealing an unassailable 3-1 lead in the five-match series.
Facing a target of 192 runs for victory, India initially seemed poised for a comfortable win as they cruised to 84 for no loss. However, the English spinners staged a remarkable comeback, triggering a collapse that saw India stuttering at 120-5.
The turning point came through the resilient partnership between Shubman Gill, who contributed with a composed 52, and Dhruv Jurel, adding a crucial 39 runs. Their unbroken stand of 72 runs for the sixth wicket proved to be the decisive factor in India’s triumph on the penultimate day of the contest.
While England’s off-spinner Shoaib Bashir put up a valiant effort, claiming 3-79 in the second innings to add to his five wickets in the first innings, it wasn’t enough to keep England’s hopes alive in the series.
Skipper Rohit Sharma said, ‘It’s been a very hard fought series. To come at the right side of it at the end of 4 Tests, I’m feeling very proud of the boys – I’m happy at having achieved what we wanted to do, a very composed and very spirited set of guys. It clearly tells me that they want to be here, all the hard grind, in local and domestic cricket. It’s a big challenge to play Test cricket, but the response has been quite encouraging. The only work for Rahul bhai and me is to get the things done. They’re very clear at what they want to do, Jurel, in his second play, showed a lot of composure and has the shots as well. His 90 in the first innings brought us close to England’s total and he showed a lot of calmness and maturity in the 2nd innings. It’s always not pleasing to miss key players, but there’s nothing we can’t do as a group. It wasn’t easy for these guys to come and fill their shoes, there was a lot of pressure from outside, not inside, a lot of things were written and spoken about, but performances like this will motivate them to do better in the future. We turn up to every Test match thinking we will win, we’re not going to dwell into the past, we’re 3-1 ahead with a Test to go. A lot of the guys haven’t been used to playing a 5-Test series, but we’ll go there to do the same job and try to win the last Test as well.
