England 284 (Bairstow 106, Siraj 4-66, Bumrah 3-68) and 378 for 3 (Root 142*, Bairstow 114*, Lees 56, Crawley 46) beat India 416 (Pant 146, Jadeja 104, Anderson 5-60) and 245 (Pujara 66, Pant 57, Stokes 4-33) by seven wickets
England came to Edgbaston having gunned down targets of 277, 299 and 296 in their last three Test matches. On Tuesday they made it four in a row, pulling off their highest successful chase in Test cricket as Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow completed sparkling unbeaten hundreds, making India’s celebrated bowling attack look utterly bereft of ideas in near-perfect batting conditions.
Root sealed victory with a reverse-sweep, a symbolic moment if there ever was one. He played the shot or variants thereof – including a reverse-lap off Shardul Thakur for a six over the slips – four times in the closing overs of the game, as England picked off the last 46 runs of their target in just 34 balls. Pure Bazball.
This has been an unusual summer of relatively flat pitches and an exceedingly flat batch of Dukes balls, but this sequence of audacious chases has come against two of the best fast-bowling attacks in the world – attacks that came to England last year and went away with a 1-0 series win and a 2-1 series lead respectively. A remarkable achievement for Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum, the new captain and coach, even if the long-term viability of their all-out-attacking philosophy will be put to test more rigorously in due course, when England play in more bowling-friendly conditons.
This article was originally published by Espncricinfo.com. Read the original article here.