Five talking points from the India-England series

After five breathless Test matches, four emphatic results and a mountain of runs, wickets and records, the series between India and England has reached a conclusion. The year 2016 has been a busy one for both sides, and with some three weeks to go before the action resumes with an ODI series on 15 January, it is the right time to snap this momentous series into focus.

For England, the series has produced a couple of viable alternatives at the top of the order, and in that respect, this visit to India has not been entirely without positives. Young Lancastrian Haseeb Hameed debuted at Rajkot and his circumspect approach to Test cricket was useful in scoring two fifties.

As for India, the series may just have revealed a greater dilemma over the two occupants of the openers’ slots than before. Surely, Parthiv Patel is not imagined as the long-term solution in that role, but various possible combinations of KL Rahul, Murali Vijay and perhaps even the currently out-of-frame Shikhar Dhawan and Gautam Gambhir still exist. The advantage with Lokesh Rahul, who narrowly missed out on a double hundred in the final Test, is that he has experience of batting elsewhere in the order.

Settled sides are always a good thing to have in sport. But given the task of identifying the 'most desirable’ is a problem any team would wish upon itself, one would not be incorrect in guessing the embarrassment of riches India has right now. It is perhaps hasty to claim that India are at that stage just yet. The two newcomers to the Test team, Jayant Yadav and Karun Nair, have played six games between them, but not so to claim that India now have real options in the middle-order.

#3 – Kohli and Root outdo themselves

Heading into this series, Virat Kohli and Joe Root were widely acknowledged as two of the best batsmen in the world. That they lived up to this billing should elicit no surprise, but it is the way their willow wielding moved up a gear that really caught the eye. Granted, it has been a very busy year for Kohli, but it is yet worth noting that his tally of 1215 runs (655 of which came in these five Tests, as compared to 560 in the seven before them) is his best ever in for a calendar year at an excellent average of 75.93. In year 2014, for comparison, he played two more innings but scored 368 runs less.

The Indian Test captain is reaching new heights all the time; the innings at Mumbai was his third double hundred of the year and his career-best score of 235. He has been applying himself at the crease for longer and longer periods of time, and that perseverance is producing big knocks. Prior to the series, Root had 478 runs from 12 innings in Asia and 986 runs (versus 1385 runs in 2015) in the calendar year. He has scored 491 runs from his ten innings in this series – all of them from the number three spot – and his run-scoring has been generally very solid – one century and four fifties in the five Tests.

While Kohli has seemingly mastered the art of playing big innings, Root’s accumulation of runs in more moderate doses has been just as impressive. This series brought him very close – just four runs short to the all-time record for most runs for England in a calendar year. In fact, it can be argued that there is even room for improvement, given the Englishman did not progress beyond promising starts on more than one occasion.

Certainly, a 4-0 whitewash does not look good for England at all. Half of their total Test defeats this year (they have played 17 games) have come in this series, Cook has now lost the most games of any English captain, the visitors have scored heavily and yet been crushed by the home side more than once. England have fielded a total of 17 different players this series, and some of their selection policies have been unhelpfully short term. Like the one-Test recall for Gareth Batty in Mohali, who finished wicket-less.

#5 - DRS on the front foot

And on a more general cricketing note, it was encouraging to see the long-overdue debut of the Decision Review System in a Test series in India, as one of the sport’s powerhouses finally gave its endorsement to one of cricket’s biggest modern innovations. The use of a review is a skill in itself, a decision marked by clever judgment and intuition as well as trust in one’s teammates.

Already, the technology has been in the thick of things. One can point to various examples of its success – such as the exoneration of Cheteshwar Pujara en route to his hundred in Rajkot. Sometimes, of its doubts – Ben Stokes’ bat-on-ground dismissal in Mumbai. But if the use of this device is to continue, this series could only have helped the Indians become more efficient in their referrals to the man upstairs. With assignments against Bangladesh and Australia in 2017 upcoming, as they say in England--every little helps.