India came to Birmingham having lost a Test they had no business losing. It could have been their first win since Durban 2010-11 without any of Virat Kohli, R Ashwin or Rohit Sharma. A landmark win such as this just had to be more dramatic, hadn't it?
They went on and made it without Jasprit Bumrah, the transcendental leader of their attack. They thought about beefing up their bowling, but took what most of us thought was the conservative route of sticking with batting depth. Then they had a combination of pitch and ball that gave them 30-over windows with the new ball to take wickets with.
One of the final punctuation marks was a lovely delivery from offspinner batting-depth-provider Washington Sundar, but India won this Test through spectacular results with the new ball. With the first new ball in both innings, India took 10 wickets 243 runs, and 5 for 57 with 9.3 overs of the second new ball. England bowled 93 overs with the two new balls and managed eight wickets.
That is where the match was won and lost: 15 for 300 vs 8 for 399. We all say Test cricket is won over five days of hard work and a well-rounded attack, but this one was sealed in these three brief windows. In particular they were lethal with the second new ball in the first innings coming on the back of a back-breaking 303-run stand. In overs 31 to 80, Jamie Smith and Harry Brook had added 244 runs without looking like they could play a false shot.
India have been at the receiving end of something similar not long ago. In Bengaluru, against New Zealand last year, they were bowled out for 46 to the new ball on a green seamer, but in the second innings they looked as invincible as Smith and Brook did here. New Zealand then struck with the second new ball to win that Test.
All new balls put together, India created false shots from 20.87% of the deliveries, England only 14.88%. At the end of day four, Marcus Trescothick was asked if he saw a difference between the skills of the two bowling units. With respect, he said, not really.
Trescothick wasn't off the mark really. Not by far anyway. India seamed the ball less, and swung the ball marginally more. In a Test that the average seam was well under 0.5 degrees, we need to look at the number of high seam deliveries. England seamed 23.6% deliveries more than 0.75 degree in the first innings, and 16% in the second. The numbers for India were 16% and 21.3%.
With the first new ball, England seamed 38% and 17.9% deliveries more than 0.75 degrees in the first and second innings. The same numbers for India were 14.2% and 22.8%. India seamed the second new ball more: 27.1% high-seam deliveries as against 18.2%.
The differences between the two units were subtler. Akash Deep, who came in as the target for people waiting to see how big a drop it would be from Bumrah but instead took a ten-wicket haul, used the crease better than others. When he aimed to bowl in the channel, Akash went wider on the crease than anyone other than Josh Tongue, who barely bowled in the channel.
Tongue himself acknowledged the angle created doubt and sometimes left the batters playing inside the line. An example was Ollie Pope. Tongue would go on to implement it himself to bowl KL Rahul out with one that angled in and seamed away. Akash did him one better by knocking Joe Root over in the same fashion.
India didn't aim at the stumps more often, they weren't quicker, but with the new ball, they bowled good length more often. Even there, England bowled just as much as India did in the 6-7m band: around 20% of the times. However, England bowled around 15% deliveries with the new ball in the 7-8m band, but India could do it around 30% of the times.
Part of the reason has to be that England kept playing shots, which encouraged Akash and Siraj to keep bowling a tighter cluster. England's bowlers saw no hope from more sound India batters, and were forced to go searching full or short. They were sound but not slow by any means.
Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley were true to their Bazball philosophy but on this new-ball pitch, it paid to have wickets in hand for when the ball got softer. As much as India's bowlers stayed on good lengths, it was England's batting that rewarded them. Test matches are almost always won by the bowlers, but these are not ordinary Test matches. These are pitches and balls that shouldn't be producing results, but the way England are batting is contriving results. Batting might not be able to win you Tests, but it can lose you on the odd occasion.