Why England picked four fast bowlers for the fourth Test at Mumbai
England have lost the fourth Test in Mumbai by an innings and 36 runs and lost the series in the process. But what was curious apart from their insipid performance with the bat in the second innings was their decision to go in with just two front-line spinners. After the defeat, captain Alastair Cook explained the reasoning behind their decision to do so.
Although the Wankhede pitch is known to assist the spinners, which is evident from the fact that Anil Kumble has the most Test wickets at the ground, Cook decided to go with four seamers and just Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali as the spinners.
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Despite his decision to play the extra seamer, of the 182.3 overs that the visitors sent down, Rashid and Moeen bowled more than 50 overs apiece while no seamer bowled more than 20. And that undermined the decision to go with the option that afforded them more control.
“In hindsight the fourth seamer was an option,” Cook admitted. “We really wanted to have a look at what the fourth seamer would look like. Our two best spinners have been Mo and Rash. Maybe if we had bowled first, there would have been better control.”
Third spinner would have been handy: Cook
Cook was also quick to admit that it was a mistake but attributed that it would have been very different if they didn’t spend nearly two days in the field after posting 400 on the board in their first innings and making the most of their decision to bat first.
“It was a mistake to go for the fourth seamer. Would have, could have and all that kind of stuff isn’t really good enough,” he said. “We haven't been good enough to get over the line. When you get a team doing 160 overs in the field, even the spinners get tired.
“Even Ashwin would get tired if we are batting long and that is quite natural. We scored almost 600 runs on this wicket. To me, we batted better than we have done in the previous two games. I would say that we lost the game because of our missed chances and of course a third spinner would have been handy.“
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Although he admitted that India were the better team, he rued his side’s inability to take their chances for the loss apart from the incredible performance of Virat Kohli.
“We had our chances in the second innings. They were 300/6, obviously Virat played an extraordinary innings. We dropped him on 60 odd and (Jayant) Yadav played well too. We gave him a couple of chances as well. We were in the game for three days, but weren't good enough to take the chances. Full credit to India,” the England skipper added.
“Virat is having one of those years you dream of as a player and as a captain. He leads from the front, he scores a hell a lot of runs. That's a huge amount of credit to him and clearly one of the great batsmen of our generation. Certainly it's very hard to bowl to him in these kind of conditions when he's in this form.”
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