UK press react to drawn series at the Oval, Michael Vaughan, Ben Stokes

With the dust settling on one of the great Test series of the modern era, culminating in India’s thrilling six-run win to draw the series 2-2 in the final Test at The Oval, former England captain Michael Vaughan has hit the current crop with some home truths.

Rightly so, most of the English press spent the wash up of the incredible final day hailing the bravery of the injured Chris Woakes to walk out at number 11 with his arm in a sling, the lion-hearted Mohammed Siraj for his matchwinning five-wicket haul and the series as a whole for 25 days of captivating Test cricket.

But Vaughan called out the elephant room, saying that England botched their chance to win the series that was said to be the best since the 2005 Ashes by BBC commentator Jonathan Agnew.

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Book-ending the series with successful run chases of more than 370 would have been an astonishing feat, but England had only themselves to blame for falling short of such an accomplishment, according to Vaughan.

The Fox Cricket commentator was also not the only former England skipper to suggest that the shortcomings of days four and five presents troubling signs ahead of the Ashes in Australia this summer.

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‘THE TRUTH IS…’

In his column in the Telegraph, Vaughan stressed that he did not want to be too harsh on a side that effectively played with ten men from day one onwards following Woakes’ shoulder injury.

They were also missing captain Ben Stokes with a shoulder injury of his own.

The finger could be pointed at England’s fielding as they dropped six catches in India’s second innings.

A re-cast bowling line-up conceding 64 extras across a tight Test match was costly too.

“But the truth is England panicked,” Vaughan said of England’s batting.

“The closer they got, within 70, they tried to be more high-risk. The approach was wrong on the final morning. It was too risky.”

Vaughan said that England needed just “one steady head” who took a measured approach to chasing down the total, no matter how long it took.

“If India lost in that fashion, we would have said they yipped up. If South Africa lost like that, we would say they choked. It was that bad a miss. The defeat will really hurt England. When you know you should win a game, it is so painful,” he added.

England were short-priced favourites to seal victory with Harry Brook and Joe Root still at the crease on the fourth afternoon.

When Brook departed, skying a simple catch to cover as his bat flew out of his hands to square leg in a bizarre end to a sensational innings of 111 from just 98 balls, the hosts needed just 73 more runs with six wickets in hand.

Stokes shrugged off any suggestion that Brook had cost his team despite scoring his 10th Test century, in just his 30th Test match.

But on the Sky Sports Cricket podcast, former England captain Nasser Hussain, said that England’s white-ball skipper must have better match awareness.

Hussain said, citing the treatment of Kevin Pietersen as an example: “We used to give KP stick when KP would say, ‘that’s the way I play’.

“Now, you do have to play the situation as well. And that’s what Harry may have to learn and add to his game and learn.

“And maybe from this, the people below him, once put under pressure in a certain situation, may collapse in a heap.

“So next time, even though it’s your shot, play the situation to get your team closer to the line.

“But I cannot be critical if someone’s got 10 hundreds in 50 innings and plays the way he does.”

Those that came after Brook did collapse in a heap.

Stokes’ replacement Jacob Bethell came and went.

The 21-year-old, who is still yet to score a century in professional match, was completely out of sorts having been thrust into the side for the series finale off the back of one first class match, two ODIs and six T20s since the beginning of June.

He was eventually bowled for 5 from 31 deliveries, missing a wild slog to hand Prasidh Krishna one of his four scalps.

Rather than the shot itself — The Guardian’s chief sports writer Barney Ronay suggested that Bethell looked like he was batting with a “stale baguette” — Vaughan, along with Hussain and Atherton, lamented the management of Bethell in the lead-up to his reintroduction to the side.

“I would actually like to sit down with (managing director) Rob Key and (selector) Luke Wright and ask them this: when you were 21, would you like to be thrown into a Test match on the back of no cricket?,” Vaughan wrote.

“If they say they would not have minded, they are lying.”

Joe Root was the last to fall on day four, with Krishna finding his outside edge after a well-made 105, his 39th century in Test cricket.

But it was the batting on the final morning that Vaughan was most critical of.

Jamie Smith (2), Jamie Overton (9) and Josh Tongue (0) fell within ten runs of one another to leave Gus Atkinson (17) with the support of the one-armed Woakes at the non-striker’s end.

The entire final day was one big moment of madness, there was no cool head to see England home, and the inability to secure a series win ultimately goes down as an indictment on the Bazball regime.

“Of course you can look at it two ways. It is a great achievement to get so close, but when you have got 70 to win, you should waltz home in your own conditions,” Vaughan said.

“England had done the hard work. They had reached the point where they should have won the game and they did not.

“They are great to watch and garner so much attention because of their style of play, but that has also been their problem so far.”

BEST SINCE ‘05

For England’s failure to seize big moments, India’s ability to get themselves off the canvas was a staple of a gripping series.

New captain Shubman Gill’s knocks of 269 and 161 at Edgbaston inspired them to a series-levelling victory after being the better side for four days in the series opener at Leeds before England motored down the target of 371 on the final day, led by Ben Duckett’s 149.

After they were defeated in a 22-run thriller in the third Test at Lords, India had their backs against the wall in Manchester, losing their first two wickets without scoring while being 311 runs behind, only for centurions Gill, Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar to complete an incredible escape act.

They appeared to be down and out again at The Oval, England were 42 runs from a 3-1 series victory with Root and Bethell at the crease before India removed those two in quick succession to give themselves a sniff heading into the final day.

Siraj then willed the visitors over the line to salvage a drawn series after being unable to do so in Sydney in January.

“56 minutes of hell. 56 minutes of heaven,” was how ESPN Cricinfo’s Vithushan Ehantharajah described the final day’s play.

“56 minutes of the wildest ride of your goddamn life. 56 minutes that will change you forever.”

It was a fitting end to a series where every day felt like a box office event.

From batting mastery at Headingley and Edgbaston, to time-wasting drama and a nailbiting finish at Lords, and to the handshake incident at Old Trafford, and Prasidh Krishna putting his arm around Ben Duckett after dismissing him at The Oval, there were sub plots plenty.

All those incidents were what made the series so special.

It could not be scripted.

No one knew what was coming next, hence why the BBC’s Jonathan Agnew was one of several esteemed voices to regard the highest-scoring five-Test series as the best since England’s 2-1 Ashes win in 2005.

Just as that 18-year drought breaking triumph for England had, this series possessed the outright bizarre.

It is dumbfounding that India’s two victories came in the absence of the amazing Jasprit Bumrah.

At the start of the series, most would have expected England’s two victories to come while the great fast bowler was sidelined akin to their wins in 2005 when Glenn McGrath sat out after infamously rolling his ankle on a cricket ball at Edgbaston.

For all the absurdness, The Guardian’s Barney Ronay wrote that it was “simply time for hats off here”, and paid credit to England’s Bazballers with a potential era shift looming after the Ashes.

“For all the bullshit, the moments of head-scratch, the infuriating asides, these lunatics are producing something entirely new,” Ronay wrote.

“‘Are You Not Entertained?’” doesn’t really do it justice. Are you not wrung out, frazzled, wowed? It has been the most glorious experiment, moments of beauty, fun and impossible drama set always to its own insistent set of rhythms.

“And who knows, we may not see this again. This may be the thing, right here. Who knows if Stokes will play another Test in England? The plan is to keep rolling on, but Australia tends to be a bookend and England’s captain has been playing at this level for 14 years.

“Woakes may be done. Joe Root, surely not. Mark Wood, not sure. Jofra Archer, not sure. But what a show they have given us.”

TOP ORDER PROBLEMS PERSIST

Australia is not the only side with concerns surrounding its top three heading into the Ashes.

Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope shut down talk of being ousted at the start of the English summer with centuries against Zimbabwe, but no one really learned anything about the pair across the five Tests against India.

Pope scored 306 runs at 34 from first drop, including a century in the series opener at Leeds.

He took the reins in Stokes’ absence at The Oval, but Vaughan believes that going forward Brook should be handed such a responsibility instead.

Bethell did little in his appearance in the series finale to warrant the calls for him to displace Pope at three in Australia after a promising tour of New Zealand last year where the youngster slotted in at first drop to accommodate Pope taking the gloves.

But The Telegraph’s chief cricket writer Scyld Berry believes England may have to find another option in this scathing assessment in his series ratings, in which he gave Pope a score of six out of ten.

“If he could wait for the ball and play it under his eyes, as he did in his Headingley hundred, England would not have to look any further,” Berry wrote.

“But it seems he cannot resist throwing his hands at the ball at the very start of his innings. He does not have the technique of a No 3 either when his head falls to the offside and he plays across the line.”

Crawley, meanwhile, tallied 290 runs at 32.22 with three half-centuries, but he was the only member of England’s regular top seven for the summer to not to reach three figures.

The tall right-hander’s career record now reads 59 Tests, 3,313 runs at an average of 31.55 with five centuries.

No one has opened the batting so many times at Test cricket with that low of an average.

But England have backed themselves into a corner with their selection of Crawley, and Berry does not see them changing tack despite another flaw in the 27-year-old’s game being exposed.

“Still averaging 31, no more, but it is too late to change horses now,” he wrote.

“And the opening partnership is not broken because Crawley and Duckett average 46 per innings.

“Beware dropping slip catches in Australia: it can erode a batsman’s confidence in his whole game, and Crawley shelled two chances in the Oval Test at third slip.

“Aussies will give him heaps.”

The most important player for England coming into the trip down under however, is Stokes.

Vaughan wrote that when he is fit, England can “beat anyone”, though the opposite is true when he is not.

“When Ben has been captain and the series has been tight, they have won. At the Oval, he was not out in the middle and it showed,” he wrote.

“With the mentality he brings it is so clear and obvious when he is not out there. He cannot have the same impact when he is stood on the balcony or sat next to McCullum.”

The BBC’s Stephan Shemilt wrote the day after the series that England can indeed win the Ashes, saying that it is the nation’s best chance of clinching the urn away since the champions of 2010-11.

But to do so, he also believes that England’s hopes “begin and end with Stokes”.

“He has history of turning water into wine,” he wrote.

“If he pulls this off, and gets his hands on the urn in Sydney in January, it really would be his greatest miracle.”

He added that the “biggest challenge” outside of keeping Stokes fit stems from the “noise” that is already coming from Down Under.

“It will only get louder over the next three months. Lyon, Steve Smith and David Warner have piped up. It’s only a matter of time before Kylie Minogue, Ned Kelly and Bluey the dog have their say too,” he wrote.

“There is something about this England team that particularly irks the Australians. They cannot fathom the Bazball way. They respect Stokes, but do not rate New Zealander Brendon McCullum.”