CRICKET ENGLAND v INDIA, SECOND TEST:IAN BELL made 159 at Trent Bridge yesterday, the innings of his life that pulled England back from a deficit to a position where they will entertain well-founded hopes of winning the second Test.
So far, so simple.
But in a game that has at times become increasingly dishonourable it required an honourable act by India’s captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his team to enable Bell to complete an innings that appeared to have been curtailed by his own doziness.
It was Eoin Morgan, himself playing an innings that will have staved off the wolves for a while, who turned the last ball of the afternoon session off his legs towards backward square leg. Round the boundary galumphed the solid figure of Praveen Kumar, who made a worthy if cumbersome dive in attempting to stop it, only to tumble over the ropes.
The crowd guffawed merrily as he got to his feet, temporarily disorientated, and searched for the ball. He assumed, mistakenly as it transpired, that the ball had touched the rope and, with no urgency, collected it and threw it gently to Dhoni.
The batsmen had run three, at which point Bell, perhaps seduced by the crowd noise and the reaction of Kumar, appeared to assume a boundary and set off to the sanctuary of the tea-time pavilion.
Dhoni had collected the ball and lobbed it to the short-leg fielder Abhinav Mukund, who, almost as an afterthought, flicked off a bail and gently asked the question of the square-leg umpire Marais Erasmus. For five minutes, during which time Bell, with 137 to his name, and Morgan had made their way to the boundary edge before being alerted to the fact that something might be amiss.
The third umpire, Billy Bowden, was consulted to check whether the ball had hit the rope (it had not) and the subsequent sequence of events, in particular whether either umpire had called time before the bails were removed. Again it appeared they had not. Bell, quite correctly, was given out. In effect he had simply wandered out of his crease – the fact that he was not attempting a fourth run an irrelevance.
India left the field with boos and catcalls ringing out, and returned after the interval to much the same, which immediately turned to cheers and a standing ovation when Bell followed Morgan down the pavilion steps to resume his innings.
During the interval, the England captain, Andrew Strauss, and the coach, Andy Flower, had approached India and asked them to consider withdrawing their appeal, as happened when Tony Greig ran out West Indies batsman Alvin Kallicharran for 142 from the last ball of the day in Trinidad in February 1974. Kallicharran was reinstated and went on to score 158. Dhoni, after mulling it over, agreed.
This was a magnanimous gesture on behalf of Dhoni and his team, who were quite within their rights to act as they had on the field. This is not to say that he did not recognise back in the dressing room that he was in a position to defuse a situation that would have soured the remainder of what has become an absorbing match and series. Bell will have learned that in cricket, as in other sports, you play to the metaphorical whistle. He will not always get favours like this.
There was some judicial balance in the fact that he capitalised only to the tune of 22 more runs before edging to slip, via a rebound from Dhoni, as, with the new ball approaching, he shaped to cut the left-arm spin of Yuvraj Singh.
But for five-and-a-half hours Bell had played with sublime skill and freedom on a pitch that was still uncomfortable even if it had quietened down once the ball had gone soft (there is still something testing in it for the new-ball).
The crowd have now been treated to two monumental innings of differing characteristics: Rahul Dravid’s exhibition of self-restraint and technique; Bell’s freedom of expression and exquisite poise is of a kind matched in the modern game only by VVS Laxman and Mahela Jayawardene.
Bell hit 24 fours, but did not so much pepper the boundary as shower it with gentle kisses – third man a productive area as he dabbed the ball away – or flicks to fine leg. Brutal power-hitting may dominate aspects of cricket but there is still room for the artist.
He needed support and after Strauss had been caught behind following a 51-run stand for the second wicket he found it. First with Kevin Pietersen, who batted with his new-found restraint and responsibility to make 63 of a third-wicket stand of 162, and then Morgan, who followed his scores of 0, 19 and 0 with 70, before succumbing to the second new ball, the fourth wicket producing 104.
Jonathan Trott, injured shoulder eased, came and went, but Matt Prior, pummelling the off-side in his habitual manner, reached a half-century from 38 balls. Tim Bresnan extended England’s lead beyond 300 – a figure exceeded in the fourth innings only three times on this ground.
At 441 for six at the close, a lead of 374, England now hold the aces.
GuardianService
