The home side can point to their depleted stock of fast bowlers. Mark Wood and Olly Stone have missed the entire Test summer, young back-ups like Josh Hull and Sonny Baker have had stop-start seasons.
Brydon Carse and Jofra Archer endured the bowlers’ graveyard in the fourth Test at Old Trafford. Hindsight is glorious and, a week on, suggests it would have been wiser to save one of them for The Oval. England were going for the win that would have sealed the series and did not get it. Had they caught Ravindra Jadeja on the final day, it may have been a different story. Drops have become a recurring theme.
Of all the pacers England could have asked to play all five Tests against India, the task was given to Chris Woakes, the oldest man in the squad. It would have been impossible to legislate for Woakes’ shoulder injury, but there is also a question of whether a Brendon McCullum non-negotiable of chasing every lost cause to the boundary should apply to a weary 36-year-old fast bowler.
It left Gus Atkinson, Josh Tongue and Jamie Overton to shoulder the burden. None of the trio shirked their responsibility, delivering a lion-hearted effort on Saturday in particular.
Atkinson’s 48.4 overs in the match and Tongue’s 46 are each man’s most in first-class cricket, Overton’s 38 his most for three years.
Atkinson looked back to the bowler that took Test cricket by storm last year. His performance belied any worries about a lack of cricket for the previous two months and suggests he perhaps could have played at Old Trafford. He should take the new ball for the first Ashes Test in Perth.
Tongue has had a bizarre game. Graham Gooch once said that playing New Zealand with the great Richard Hadlee in the team was like “facing World XI at one end and Ilford 2nd XI at the other”. In the first innings at The Oval, Tongue was that in one bowler. He improved in the second and deserved his five-wicket haul, ending as England’s leading wicket-taker in the series, despite only playing three Tests.