07 July,2025 07:51 AM IST | Birmingham | Santosh Suri
India`s Akash Deep (C) celebrates with teammates after taking the wicket of England`s Chris Woakes on day three of the second cricket test match between England and India at Edgbaston cricket ground in Birmingham, central England. Pic/AFP
A team may score a thousand runs, but cannot win a Test match without prising out 20 wickets. Going into the second Test match at Edgbaston, there were doubts about the ability of the Indian bowlers to get England out twice on a flat track here, especially in the wake of poor performance in the first game at Headingley in Leeds last week and in the absence of the main strike bowler, Jasprit Bumrah. There were also questions about the non-inclusion of left-arm wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav. But if you win a Test match by a big margin against all odds, there cannot be much criticism of the team management, including on the issue of the delayed declaration on the fourth evening.
The Indian pacers, especially Mohammed Siraj and Akash Deep, bowled their hearts out on the placid wicket and in tandem picked 17 of the 20 wickets to clinch the game for India. Akash, with a match haul of 10-187 (4-88 & 6-99), became only the second Indian bowler after Chetan Sharma (10-188, here in Edgbaston in 1986) to bag 10 wickets in a Test in England. Siraj and Akash in the first innings had become the first Indian pace bowlers to share all 10 wickets in an innings in England. There were only two earlier instances of two Indian pacers sharing all 10 wickets in an overseas Test match: by Kapil Dev (5-97) and Karsan Ghavri (5-107) at Sydney in 1981, and Mohammed Shami (4-70) and Ishant Sharma (6-51) at Basin Reserve, New Zealand in 2014.
This game, however, will always be remembered as a Shubman Gill special. Besides the glorious batting by the skipper, scoring 430 runs in the match with a double century and a century, he also marshalled his resources well to not only tame the overrated England team but also get the better of conditions in the form of a flat track and rain delay on the final day. He has now joined the elite group of six earlier captains who have led the team to Test victory in England. The first ever was Ajit Wadekar (The Oval, 1976), followed by two under Kapil Dev (Lord's and Leeds, 1986). The next win came only in the new millennium under Sourav Ganguly (Nottinghan, 2002), followed by Rahul Dravid (Nottingham, 2007), MS Dhoni (Lord's 2014) and three by Virat Kohli on two tours (Nottingham 2018 and Lord's and Oval in 2021).
How rare and valuable a win in England is can be gauged from the fact that of the 69 Test matches played between the two in England ever since 1932, this is only the 10th win for India. Of the 19 series played here, India have won only thrice (1971, 1986, and 2007) and drawn only twice (2002 and 2021-22). There is no doubt that after this win, the Indian fans would expect a series win, but that is a long way off. The next challenge for the Indians is to take the English Lions in their den at Lord's.
10-187
Akash Deep's match figures at Edgbaston - the best by an Indian in England
