Early on the fifth day here Ben Stokes ran in to bowl at Shubman Gill, letting out a short moan of effort and pain as the ball left his hand. It climbed off the pitch and smashed into Gill’s right glove, sending the batter scuttling away in agony.
It was the second time he had been hit on that hand; on Thursday Jofra Archer was the bowler, and when Gill ripped off the glove to assess the damage he revealed a thumb clad in skin‑toned protective strapping. This time when the glove came off his thumb was fully bandaged, but it was the forefinger that had taken the hit.
Stokes returned to his mark, right arm hanging limp by his side, left hand massaging gingerly a spot just beneath his shoulder which had been bothering him since, at the very latest, he performed his warmup exercises before play. This towards the end of a game in which he has struggled with a cramping calf and an apparent issue on the back of his right thigh.
For eight increasingly agonised overs he protected his right arm from any use except that necessary to fling the ball at an opposition batter at the greatest possible speed. At the end of a spell that despite everything was outstanding, and during which KL Rahul was dismissed, several teammates approached and held their hands out for a congratulatory tap. Those who came to his right were met by his left hand, reaching awkwardly across his body. By this stage that right arm was good for nothing.
For a while before the second new ball became available the close fielders taunted, in particular, Washington Sundar about the fact that he was about to have to deal with Jofra Archer, so successful in this series against left-handers, and a fresh, hard, shiny rock hurtling towards him at terrifying speeds. When the moment came Archer’s first ball was clocked at just 80mph. He ended his first over feeling the left side of his torso, and he never approached the top speeds we saw on his return to the Test side at Lord’s a fortnight ago. Midway through the second session, as the players took drinks, a team medic ran on to give him painkillers.
England are expected to cancel their scheduled training session at the Oval on Tuesday. Since 18 June, when both teams gathered at Headingley before the opening game of the series, they have spent 28 of a possible 40 days playing or training: 28 days later, they are starting to resemble extras in 28 Days Later.
Should the last game go the distance those numbers will have moved to as much as 35 out of 48, with 52% of those days spent playing long hours of competitive cricket at the highest level, many of them in high temperatures. Some training sessions have been optional, with bowlers in particular able to control their workloads, and India’s rule is that every player must report for just one of the two official warmup days before each Test – but the tourists have also done additional training during periods that England’s players have spent at home.
However much you love the game, live the game, are paid to play it, this is a lot. The impact, particularly on bowlers, is significant: after the second game of the series one England player reported struggling to so much as sit down. After the last one Stokes said he spent four days in bed; four days after the end of this match the teams will have relocated to London, trained, and played a full day of the next one.
With a game still to play there have only been two series this century in which Indian bowlers have done more work, and only rain or a pair of England collapses at the Oval can keep it from the top spot. Even before he hauled himself to Old Trafford for the final day Stokes had bowled more overs than in any other series in his career.
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It is the 27th bilateral series in which Chris Woakes has played, and he has never been asked to bowl more. It is only Brydon Carse’s third, but he reached unexplored territory by the second day at Lord’s. It is entirely possible that none of those players will be considered able to bowl at the Oval, with the nature of Archer’s gentle reintroduction to Test cricket likely also to rule him out.
Meanwhile it is not yet the most work-intensive series of Mohammed Siraj’s career, but it will become so if he plays the last game – and given his competitive nature, and the fact that India will almost certainly swap out all of the other seamers involved here, he almost certainly will. Three of their players missed this game through injury and Rishabh Pant, their vice-captain, arrived on Sunday morning on crutches.
With one Test to go we have had play in every session of every day of every game of the series. Five-day finishes were once an unusual occurrence, with many Tests reaching rapid conclusions on wickets that became increasingly unplayable as they dried and tired. But as we are seeing, if the surfaces never fall apart, the players start to do so.
