Fourth innings pursuits have etched some of the most iconic images in Test cricket. Brian Lara leaping skywards after the Bridgetown heist in 1999, Ben Stokes shivering Headingley with his roar in 2019, or Kusal Perera kissing the Kingsmead grass in 2017, shedding sweat and tears. There is both novelty and mystique, rendered by the infrequency of successful fourth-innings chases. But the game’s blinding evolution is breaking the barriers, instilling the oldest format with a youthful energy, and steep targets no longer daunt batsmen as they once used to.
In the history of the game, 957 times have a side set a target of 250 plus. Only 79 times have the score been overhauled, as many 569 ended in lost causes and 308 in draws. The numbers reveal the historical distress of surpassing a target when the surface, more often than not, is the worst to bat. The strips become an embroidered patchwork of cracks and roughs, the top soil loosening/flaking/crumbling to reveal its dark, deceitful soul. Depending on the locale, the pitch would turn, spit, stop or bounce indifferently, making survival itself an ordeal. Forget overhauls.
Golden age of chasing
Of the 79 instances teams who have achieved 250-plus targets, 15 were wrought this decade, which is roughly one-fifth of all fourth-innings heists. It’s an immense number when you consider that the decade is only five years old and Test cricket has formally existed for 148 years. Of those, five were totals above 300 (only 37 times has it ever been achieved). Till 2020, the winning percentage was 28.3. The last five years, it has shot to 46.8, the latest being England’s dismantling of India at Headingley, harmonising the trail of 371 with ridiculous ease, almost demystifying the mystique of fourth-innings acts. Of those 15, England accounts for nearly half (six), which reflects their bravado approach in Tests.
Bazball influence
The influence of Brendon McCullum’s methodical merry ballers is indisputable. The frequency is bewildering, but the nervelessness is more staggering. It’s not just that they have scaled the summit, but how comfortably they have trekked to the peak. In Headingley against India, they hardly let imaginary fears stalk them, despite a few sliding door moments like the Shardul Thakur twin wickets, or later the Ben Stokes dismissal. It’s as though they had rubbed off the last misbehaving ball from the memory. At times in the past, the approach has backlashed, especially on the subcontinent, but more often than not Stokes and Co have pulled off victories emphatically. All England captains before him eclipsed totals beyond 250 just a dozen times; Stokes’s count is already six (out of 12 times), in only 34 games. Such radical approaches, where the scoreboard pressure doesn’t break them, could have a contagious effect on the cricketing world at large. Like the pinch-hitting boom after Sri Lanka’s 1996 World Cup triumph. Or teams reluctant to follow-on teams after VVS Laxman’s Eden Gardens masterpiece.
But even before the Bazballers started hauling down mega totals, India blasted 329 to win at the Gabba in 2021; West Indies strung 395, the fifth-highest successful run chase of all time, in Chattogram the same year; Pakistan clinched 342 against Sri Lanka in Galle in 2022, just when Bazball was catching fire.
T20 impact
The shortest format has resisted age-old conventions, shackled the self-imposed handcuffs, and broadened the horizons of imagination. “A score of 350 in the good old days was too tall a chase in the fourth innings of a Test match. But, with zero fear in the modern cricketer, born out of a T20 mindset, that landscape has changed,” England great Kevin Pietersen said on the morning of the fifth day in Headingley. It’s not just the mindset to attack but to blend the T20 bravado to a Test match environment.
Batsmen are still sticking largely to standard cricketing shots, their high-yield percentage strokes, but they don’t dead-bat a half volley just because the ball is swinging or the team is in trouble. Test cricket as such has become faster, runs scorer at a quicker rate than ever before (even though runs per wicket has not changed much). The last decade, the average run rate per innings was 3.1 an over; this decade it has sprung to 3.3. In the last three years England have scored at a frenetic rate of 4.88, 4.39 and 5.03. Australia has maintained 3.6. Correspondingly, the incidence of draws have reduced too. Just 15 percent of matches this decade have ended in a deadlock, which is a perceivable offshoot of the World Test Championship and the significance of points.
Hostage of conditions
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It is no coincidence just two of the 250-plus hunts this decade were achieved in Asia, at Chattogram and Galle, whereas six of them were completed in England. Fourth-innings are the toughest in Asia, where batting on turners is akin to trench warfare. Stokes and Co fumbled twice, chasing 399 and 557. In the entire history, only four times have teams managed the grim task in India (thrice the hosts won); eight in Sri Lanka, where the turn is slow, twice in Pakistan and thrice in Bangladesh. But conditions in England have changed dramatically over the years, and often batting in fourth innings tends to be the least perilous of times to bat in the country. Former England captain Mike Atherton attributed it to “covered pitches and hard loam soils that break up less readily” in a piece in Times. There have been reports that McCullum and Stokes want the pitches to remain as placid as it could be, as it aids their brand of batting. Some of the decks in Australia and South Africa have lost their spice too, despite the crumpled face.
The last barrier, thus, for the heady chasers of this decade thus remains Asia, especially India.
