Ranchi: England’s ‘Bazball’ finally came unstuck on a slow but playable Ranchi pitch as India rode fifties from Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill to win the fourth Test by five wickets and take an unassailable 3-1 lead in the five-match series.

India’s storied home dominance thus enters its 12th year but this could be the most savoured victory yet after being challenged by an English team bent on playing unconventional cricket, that too without Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami and especially Jasprit Bumrah who was rested for this match.

Needing 152 more to win after resuming on the overnight score of 40/0, Sharma showed the fortitude to take most of the strike in the morning and put to sword the bowling of James Anderson and Shoaib Bashir. But India looked in a spot of bother when they lost three wickets—including two off two balls in the first over after lunch—within 20 runs after Sharma was stumped trying to hit Shoaib Bashir.

Once Dhruv Jurel joined Shubman Gill though, India didn’t falter again. Keeping risk to a minimum, the pair milked the gaps and added 72 runs for an unbeaten fifth wicket partnership to see India home, taking the aerial route only when victory was comfortably in their sight.

This is England’s first Test series defeat after Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes came together as coach and captain in May 2022, inspiring them to play a bold brand of cricket that saw 300-plus totals being chased down with one-day like dexterity. India however proved to be an obstacle too high for England as they didn’t exhibit the flexibility to play situational cricket to negate an experienced bowling attack on pitches that required application and patience.

Stokes himself endured horrible form, scoring just one fifty so far. Joe Root was woefully out of form till he went back to playing old-school cricket and scored a hundred that gave England an upper hand towards the start of this Test. But Zak Crawley’s fifty was the only contribution of note in the second innings as England failed to set India with a steep target.

Winning three Tests on the bounce, even at home, isn’t easy, especially after losing a similar humdinger at Hyderabad where they fell 28 short chasing 231 on a flat pitch. But at the heart of this stirring Indian comeback were some extraordinary performances from the younger players.

Yashashvi Jaiswal, only 22, has already aggregated 655 runs with two double hundreds in Visakhapatnam and Rajkot. Shubman Gill was scratchy towards the beginning but he still roughed it out to average 48.85 now, helped by a hundred in Visakhapatnam. Outstanding in this Test has been Man of the Match Dhruv Jurel whose 90 in the first innings was the reason India could trim down the first innings lead to 46. In his second essay too, Jurel showed the maturity to find singles when England were trying to build up pressure.

Four debuts—Rajat Patidar, Jurel, Sarfaraz Khan and Akash Deep—in this series tells you how deep India had to dig to find the right. And barring Patidar, who has just not looked the part, everyone has come up with an innings to remember or a match-altering spell.

“Clearly tells me they (youngsters) want to be here,” said Sharma later at the post-match presentation. “All the hard work they have done in the past, coming up playing domestic cricket and performing there, coming here is a big challenge. But when I look at them, talk to them and the responses that I get from them is quite encouraging.”

He added: “It is not pleasing when you miss your key players, but you can do nothing as a group. Those guys (senior players like Kohli, Rahul and Shami) are proven players in every condition and to come in and fill their shoes was not easy for these guys. There was pressure from the outside not inside but I thought they responded very well to all the situations. When you make a mark like that, it holds you in a good position to have a long career. Performances like this will motivate them and make sure whenever the opportunity comes they are ready for it.”

The more experienced players played a stellar part as well. Sharma set up this chase as he set up Rajkot’s win with a patient hundred. Every time Bumrah was given the ball, he got India a wicket. Ravindra Jadeja did a double of a hundred and a five-wicket haul in Rajkot. Here, Ravichandran Ashwin brought all his experience into play during England’s second innings, taking five wickets. His partner in crime this time was Kuldeep Yadav whose guile was probably too much for England who had already let the appearance of the pitch play mind games with their batters.