It started in the worst possible way. By the second over of the day England were 84 for five, five hundred runs and a thousand miles behind. Their best batter, Joe Root had just been caught off the ninth ball of the morning, and their captain, Ben Stokes, who has worked so many miracles for them before, had been caught off the 10th, done by a wicked, lifting delivery, nasty, brutish and short, which brushed off his glove on its way through to the keeper.
The bowler, Mohammad Siraj, was on a hat-trick, and here comes England’s No 7, Jamie Smith, 24 years old, playing his 19th Test innings.
The field was set, the slips were waiting, the crowd was up. There was, everyone watching felt sure, only one way the game was heading. The ball was a good one, on a length just outside off and moving in towards middle. Smith took a half-step forwards and, crack, thumped it back down the ground for four.
Everyone else in this England team had to unlearn a lot of what they had been taught to begin to bat like this. But not Smith. He and Harry Brook are hothouse kids.
Brendon McCullum is the only coach they have had in Test cricket and his way of playing is all they have known. Between the two of them, they turned this into one the great days of Test cricket. If you offered the 25,000 fans who were lucky enough to be inside the ground the chance to spend this July Friday anywhere else, you would have struggled to find one person among them who would not have turned you down flat and snapped their head back to the match.
You can berate England, you can shake your head, puff out your cheeks and suck your teeth, but you surely can not take your eyes off them. Where any number of England sides before them would have tried to poke, prod and block their way towards the end of the innings, and the inevitable defeat lying beyond it, this one decided to crash, bang and wallop their way ahead instead. It was like watching Butch and Sundance come charging out of the building in the final reel.
In the first innings in the first Test at Headingley, Smith had been caught on the boundary when he had scored 40, trying to hook a second consecutive six off a short ball from Prasidh Krishna. Time was when English cricket would not have forgiven a shot like that.
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But Smith revealed that instead of giving him a “smack on the wrist” all Brendon McCullum said was that he felt the shot had been the right choice because Smith was hitting with the wind. Which Smith said left him thinking he would do the same thing all over again the next time he found himself in a similar position.
That happened sooner than Smith might have imagined. After he had been in for 20 minutes on Friday, Krishna hammered a short ball in at his ribs, which Smith whipped away for four. India already had two men back on the leg-side boundary, waiting for him to play it that way, and Shubman Gill decided to move a third back to join them.
Krishna bowled a second short ball and Smith hit this one up and over the fielders for six. So Gill moved two more fielders over to the leg side. India now had six men there ready and waiting. Krishna bowled a third short ball and this time Smith whistled his pull shot away for four. So Krishna tried a fourth and Smith hit it the same way.
Krishna pitched the sixth ball up full. So Smith hit it back past him for four more. The over went for 23 and counting from that first four onwards Smith took 35 off 13 balls Krishna bowled to him.
The game changed in that 20-minute stretch. All of a sudden, England were up and running. Smith had raised his fifty one minute and overtaken Brook in the next and before you knew it he was closing in on Gilbert Jessop’s record for the fastest Test century by an Englishman. He did not quite make it. His hundred came in the last over before lunch off the 80th delivery he had faced.
When it was all over, at the far end of the day, England trailed by 180 and had 10 wickets left to get. The field was set, the slips were waiting, the crowd was up, there was, everyone watching felt sure, only one way the game was heading …
