'We obviously want to wheel him in, but we also want to respect where his body's at.'
Lee Fortis -- the Oval pitch curator who is 'nothing, just a groundsman', as Coach Gautam Gambhir kindly told him -- conjured something out of nothing.
After lifeless tracks in the first four Tests, he created a greentop that warmed the hearts of the pace bowlers; it should have lured Jasprit Bumrah into the playing XI, really.
Bumrah hasn't been demonic in the series, not the frightening bender of the ball who was expected to fool the batsmen, beguile them to their demise.
Far from being a pace fiend, Bumrah hasn't been a factor at all, in fact. He was not relevant when England chased 371 at Leeds with indecent ease; he wasn't a factor at Lord's, though he did take five wickets in the first innings and two in the second in India's loss.
In the drawn fourth Test at Manchester, when England racked up 669, Bumrah was irrelevant, getting two wickets (England No. 7 and 8) for 112 -- the first time he gave away over 100 runs in a Test innings.
India won the one match he didn't play, in Birmingham.
He's bowled 120 overs in the three Tests and picked up 14 wickets. Bumrah's series average, 26.00, is far inferior to his career average, 19.82 -- the flat tracks of England have taken the sting out of his bowling.
It has been a horrible series for the bowlers. They have been brutalised by batsmen on the flattest possible wickets. Shubman Gill has been Bradmanesque. Rishabh Pant has been Sehwagesque. Both have scored centuries in both innings of a Test in the last few weeks.
In all, 18 centuries have been scored by batsmen of the two teams so far, easily the most in a series in England. The visitors have piled up 3,393 runs so far, India's highest in a series.
This doesn't seem like the England of the yore, where the ball swung and seamed like nowhere else and batting was fraught with danger. Bowlers have become second-class citizens in England, too.
The reason for the degradation of the bowlers in England is obvious: England's Bazball, the attack-at-all-costs philosophy, developed under Coach Brendon McCullum and Captain Ben Stokes, works best on flat tracks.
The modus operandi of chasing a target in a mad and frenetic pace is effective only if the pitch holds during the fourth innings. On this philosophy has Stokes built the best ever success rate -- close to 60% -- for an England captain.
McCullum has spurred the batsmen -- they've scored at 4.56 runs an over in the three years since he took over in 2022, up from 3.05 in the previous three years. They have, thus, created time for their bowlers to dismiss the opposition twice even on flat tracks.
For The Oval, though, the home team has obtained, through the hand of Lee Fortis, a greentop.
Bumrah missing a Test being played on a greentop is ironical and frustrating; it's possible that Fortis would have shaved the grass if Bumrah had been in top physical condition and likely to play. But he knew that Bumrah wouldn't be part of the Oval Test -- Gambhir said right before the series that Bumrah was in England to play only three of the five Tests.
"Quite a complex situation with Jasprit Bumrah," Ryan ten Doeschate, India's assistant coach said after India reached 204/6 at stumps on a rain-affected first day in London.
"We obviously want to wheel him in, but we also want to respect where his body's at, and on the basis of that, we just felt that it wasn't worth including him in the squad.
"He has bowled a large number of overs, I know it doesn't always seem like that because he's only played three Tests and he only bowled in one innings in Manchester.
"But if you look at the loads, he's bowled a lot of overs, and like he did say coming into the tour, he was going to be available for three games, and we just felt it was right to honour that call."
Bumrah is priceless. His action is spectacular, but it's also uneconomical and unconventional, intense and jerky, and he's already suffered an injury that could finish careers. For these reasons, it's right that he's a spectator and not a player at The Oval.
Fortis may be a nothing in the eyes of cricket's superstars from India, but the pitch he's made at The Oval is quite something, the toughest of the series -- it must make England rethink Bazball.
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