The Telegraph Cricket Podcast · The Telegraph

India level series after Edgbaston thrashing

·53 min·3 clips

England had to survive about 96 overs and still failed, even with rain reducing the target.

The pod starts with the obvious question: how did England lose a game they seemed set up to save? Jay Goodwill asks Nick Holt, on the ground, to make sense of a defeat that feels heavier because India had rested their best bowler, England had won the toss, and the pitch was not offering the kind of extreme assistance that makes batting easy or explains away failure. Nick does not soften it. He calls it an absolute shocker, and the discussion settles quickly on the fact that this was the first time England had been asked to bat a realistic stretch simply to force a draw on a surface like this, and they did not handle it. The rain helped more than the batting did. Will McPherson and Nick keep coming back to the same awkward point: England did enough to stay in the game for stretches, but not enough to make it survivable, and the longer they talk, the more the failure looks serious rather than unlucky. That is where the mood shifts. The conversation moves from one bad result to what it might mean for the next phase of England cricket, with the panel resisting easy panic while still sounding gloomy about how far short England fell here. Brook comes up quickly. Nick is clear that Harry Brook looks like the next Test captain, and he goes further in suggesting Smith as vice captain, treating both men as figures who could carry the next line of England leadership. That idea hangs around. The discussion then widens into a reflection on the modern line of English cricket leadership and personality, from the generation that already feels established to the next group who may become the reference points everyone else is measured against. Crawley returns to the table. The panel then turns to Zak Crawley, a familiar flashpoint, and to Shoaib Bashir, where Will presses the question of whether the backing around him is as solid as the public debate suggests, and Nick answers from inside the camp rather than outside it, saying he does not sense any weakening of the backing for Bashir. There is no neat conclusion. What you get instead is a cricket conversation still working itself out, with the hosts testing claims aloud, qualifying them as they go, and leaving the contradictions visible rather than tidying them away. That fits the mood. The whole thing feels like people who watched the match closely trying to decide whether they have just seen a bad day or something more revealing about readiness and the shape of England's next side. It ends with the third Test. By the close, the pod has shifted from immediate anger into the slower work of asking which parts of this collapse matter most, and which ones England may yet explain away if the series moves on.

As heard by us

A blunt post-match discussion that keeps the focus on England's batting failure and the bigger selection questions it raises.

Jay Goodwill, Nick Holt, and Will McPherson spend this episode on a blunt post-match debrief after England's comprehensive defeat against India.

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Why you'd press play

If you want the arguments after England's comprehensive defeat, the captaincy chatter, and the hard questions, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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