At the Home of Cricket, who will climb the slope?

The Players’ balcony within the terracotta-coloured pavilion, built some 135 years ago. The image of Kapil Dev, toothy grin and all, receiving the Prudential World Cup Trophy on 25 June 1983. The unforgettable sight of Sourav Ganguly whipping off his shirt and waving it over his head repeatedly on 13 July 2002, a little over six years after his century on Test debut at the same venue, after young turks Yuvraj
 Singh and Mohammad Kaif orchestrated a stunning assault on England’s 325 in the final of the NatWest Trophy tri-series.

The Lord’s Cricket Ground, or simply Lord’s, has been the stage of many a spectacular Indian display over the last 93 years. India played their first Test here, in 1932, and announced their intention through their speed merchants Amar Singh, Mohammad Nissar and Jahangir Khan, who took 14 of the 18 home wickets to fall even as Col. C.K. Nayudu’s men went down by 158 runs. The start might not have been propitious, but India have had great reason to reflect on their trysts with Lord’s with fondness.

Everywhere around the perimeter, one is constantly exposed to the ‘Home of Cricket’ moniker. Lord’s is the headquarters of the England and Wales Cricket Board – the International Cricket Council also used to be housed here for 96 years, until 2005 – and prides itself on its strict adherence to tradition, though in keeping with the demands of the modern times, it has allowed itself to be refurbished without compromising on its old-world charm.

It’s here that England and India will renew battle in what ought to be a compelling third act of a five-part showdown. The honours are even – India responded to a five-wicket loss in Leeds with a commanding 336-run win in Birmingham – and therefore, there is everything to play for. For all the apprehensions that a young Indian side under a first-time captain would be overrun by an experienced and settled home team, Shubman Gill’s outfit has acquitted itself creditably, outbatting the English at various stages and comprehensively outbowling them at Edgbaston even without the rested genius of Jasprit Bumrah.

Around the closeness of the series, there have been two major talking points — the nature of the surfaces, and the quality of the Dukes balls. Neither of these topics is likely to fade into the background over the next five days.

To no one’s surprise, the character of Test pitches in England have drastically changed in the last three years, since the coming together of the management group of Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum. When Stokes took over the captaincy from Joe Root, English Test cricket was at its lowest ebb — just one victory in 17 matches, culminating in a series loss in the Caribbean. The aggressive Stokes and the equally positive McCullum made a spectacular shift from the traditional, dumping an ultra-conservative approach for a diametrically opposite standpoint steeped in positivity and supreme self-belief.

Like Eoin Morgan had handpicked players to fashion a title-winning squad in the immediacy of England’s first-round elimination from the 2015 World Cup, Stokes and McCullum unearthed personnel that would fit their template instead of altering their blueprint to accommodate the existing personnel. It appealed to everyone remotely associated with English cricket – the fans, hitherto disillusioned, the administrators, who were delighted that the new-found approach was bringing the fans back and sending the coffers soaring, and an excitable media that was surprisingly pliant when it came to overlooking excesses.

Flatter surfaces

One of the inevitable offshoots of the brand of cricket labelled Bazball – McCullum goes by ‘Baz’ with his pals – was a flattening out of the pitches. Surfaces as they once existed in England would not facilitate plans that revolved around scoring at 4.5 runs an over and using time and scoreboard pressure to harry and hustle opponents. Where England was once a test of character and technique of batters, it soon became a graveyard for bowlers. Even a virtuoso like James Anderson, Test cricket’s leading non-spinner wicket-taker, was driven to term one of such tracks – in Birmingham in 2023 – as his ‘kryptonite’ for the singular lack of even token assistance. For all the talk of 20 wickets being essential to winning a Test match, England’s success has stemmed from their batting muscle, which does make for exciting action.

At times, England have looked silly and rigidly uncompromising, happy to court defeat in pursuit of glory when prudence dictated holding their horses. There is a distinct philosophy that frowns upon playing for draws; somehow, even in Test cricket, England feel it’s all right to lose when almost everyone else will set ego or whatever one wants to call it aside and knuckle down to grind out a stalemate. Again, that tack hasn’t attracted too much criticism.

Batters nowadays aren’t challenged half as much as in the past in England, when a combination of swinging balls and generous lateral movement kept Nos. 3, 4 and 5 on the edge of their seats even before the openers took guard. The flattening out of pitches has taken the dread — if that is the right word — of the new ball out of the equation, which is no disrespect to the likes of Yashasvi Jaiswal and K.L. Rahul, Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope.

England haven’t just needed good batting tracks to espouse their style, they have needed those surfaces to remain good for batting for the duration of the game. Because they fancy hunting down any target in the fourth innings – and who is to find fault, given that their two highest successful chases (378 and 371) have come in the last three years – they tend to field first when commonsense would dictate batting. The ends have justified the means more often than not, including in Leeds when 371 was reined in at a canter, but when there is even a nominal spanner in the works, England’s management group hasn’t been averse to speaking its mind.

Making pitches to suit the home team is not a novelty. In some quarters, it is referred to, not complimentarily, as ‘pitch-doctoring’. England’s faith in sustained batting beauties is also a form of pitch-doctoring, even if it doesn’t attract the same censure as a surface in India which might help the spinners from ball one and remain that way for the duration of the game, however long that might be, even if the turn is consistent and the bounce true. But that’s a story for another day.

The Birmingham surface, which deteriorated slightly but not alarmingly, didn’t go down well with England. There has been a clamour for a ‘more lively’ track at Lord’s, whatever that might be interpreted as. Lively as in more pace? More seam movement? Greater carry? Guess one has to wait and watch.

As much as the pitches, the balls being used have come under serious flak. Almost everyone who has spoken to the media over the last three weeks has lamented the Dukes going soft after 30 or 35 overs, and losing shape even before that stage. Whether it is just because of the way the ball is being made, or whether it is because of the flat, hard surfaces on which the ball takes a fair amount of pounding when it is bashed in, is open to question.

“In this series, from what I’ve seen, the ball is getting deshaped too much,” Rishabh Pant, India’s vice-captain whose ball-bashing could have something to do with the ball getting out of shape, agreed on Wednesday. “That has never happened earlier. It’s definitely irritating for the players because every ball plays differently. When it becomes softer, sometimes it’s not doing too much. But as soon as the ball is changed, it starts to do enough. As a batsman, you’ve got a challenge adjusting to it. But at the same time, I feel it’s not good for cricket anyway (the balls losing shape).”

As unacceptable as the ball going out of shape is the lack of swing up front, which further takes the bowlers out of the equation. India’s quicks have exploited the new balls better; in Birmingham, they picked up wickets with the first new ball in both innings and sparked a collapse of five for 20 in the first innings with the second new cherry, so maybe it’s a feather in the cap of the Indian batters that they haven’t lost wickets in a cluster to the new ball. But while there is still a modicum of threat at the start of an innings, that threat level drops alarmingly when the ball ages and gets to the 35-over mark or so.

“We’re not the only (having issues with the ball),” Stokes observed. “Whenever we have touring teams come here, there is an issue around the balls going soft, going completely out of shape. I don’t even think that the rings that we use (used to see if the balls have gone out of shape) are the Dukes rings. It’s something that isn’t ideal, but you’ve got to deal with it.”

Different countries use different brands of cricket balls. The Aussie-origin Kookaburra is the most popular, used in Test cricket in several parts of the world and for now enjoying exclusive monopoly in all white-ball internationals. In India, the preferred red-ball weapon of destruction is the SG Test while here in England, it has been the Dukes for a long time. Perhaps the authorities will hold the ball manufacturers to greater accountability, given how widespread the criticism of the balls being used for this series has been.

The one unique feature of Lord’s is the 2.5-metre slope that runs the breadth of the ground. For batters and bowlers alike playing here for the first time, it can be a huge battle, fighting the slope. Balls that might be left alone on line anywhere can easily have a ‘W’ written on them, while bowlers often struggle to bowl both with and against the slope. It might appear only a tiny component, but what’s it they say about appearances being deceptive?