A series that finished the following year

India led England 2–1 with one Test to play in September 2021. The fifth was due at Old Trafford and was called off hours before it started, after Covid cases in the India camp.

It was played at Edgbaston two hundred and ninety-four days later.

What had changed in between

England had a new captain. Joe Root had led in the first four Tests; Ben Stokes led in the fifth.

India had a new captain. Virat Kohli had led in the first four; Jasprit Bumrah, a fast bowler, led in the fifth, which is itself a rare enough thing to be worth a piece of its own.

England had a new coach and a new method that had already acquired a nickname. Four of the players who had appeared in the earlier Tests were no longer in either squad.

It is not obvious in what sense this was the same series.

Full scorecard: England v India, 5th Test, Edgbaston, 1–5 July 2022 →

The match

India made 416. Rishabh Pant scored 146 from 111 balls after coming in at 71 for four, and Ravindra Jadeja made 104. Their sixth-wicket stand was 222.

England replied with 284, Jonny Bairstow making 106. India made 245 second time and set 378.

England got them for the loss of three wickets. Root made 142 not out and Bairstow 114 not out, and their unbroken stand was 269. It is England’s highest successful chase in Test cricket.

What the record does with it

The series is filed under India tour of England 2021–2022, a Test series spanning two calendar years and two English summers.

The season field on this card reads 2022. The season field on the first four reads 2021.

The result line reads: 5-match series drawn 2–2. India had won the series on the field in September 2021 by any ordinary reading and did not win it.

And the card carries two players of the series: Joe Root, with 737 runs, and Jasprit Bumrah, with 125 runs and 23 wickets. Both totals span all five Tests.

The two points

One more line on the card belongs to the modern game and to nothing else. Under the points column: England 12, India −2.

India were docked two World Test Championship points for a slow over rate. So a match played ten months late, to settle a series from a previous English summer, also cost the losing side standing in a global competition that did not exist when the series began.

The alternative that was considered

Three outcomes were on the table when the Old Trafford Test was called off. Award it to England as a forfeit, which the playing conditions arguably permitted. Record it as abandoned and end the series 2–1 to India. Or reschedule.

Rescheduling was chosen, and it is defensible: nobody wanted a Test series decided by a virus and a cancellation notice.

What it produced is a series that neither side finished with the team that started it, and a 2–2 draw that no supporter of either country describes without a qualifying clause.

Where it sits

This is the modern version of the problem. Twenty years ago a match that could not be completed was simply not completed, and both captains held the trophy.

The schedule is tighter now and the money is larger, so the answer is no longer to abandon it. The answer is to find a window ten months later and play the fixture into whatever the teams have become by then.

Test number 2470 is a real Test, properly numbered, played over five days and won by seven wickets. It is also the last act of a series that had, in every sense except the administrative one, already ended.

••••••

No. 5 in Ghost Games, a series of 9.

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