“Carbon Monoxide can kill,” said the sign on the famous Oval gasholder, though it mentioned nothing about the dangers of being suffocated by England’s openers, who once again looked intent on crushing all life from India’s bowling attack during the one session of play possible after rain washed out most of the day.
Alastair Cook and Andrew Strauss are rarely prone to temptation, especially when it comes to batting. Even when India picked RP Singh to replace Praveen Kumar, left out because of an ankle injury rather than the sore thumb he injured at Edgbaston, the pair resisted trying to cane his gentle medium pace.
Instead, they opted to occupy the crease, knowing that India’s popgun attack is unlikely to even inconvenience them, let alone actually bowl them out.
Their progress to 75-0 by lunch, off 26 overs, was so serene that you wondered whether India had already settled for awaiting their declaration. Duncan Fletcher is hard man to read at the best of times but even he failed to hide the utter humiliation he and his team have suffered during this series as Cook and Strauss settled in to reprise the batting bonanza begun at Edgbaston.
India have simply not turned up in this series, which will be a deep source of embarrassment for Fletcher, though how much he is culpable, given the power of the senior players and the crazy itinerary foisted upon them, is not clear.
On Thursday, there was another problem to deal with after reports in India claimed that Virender Sehwag was heading home after this Test because he is unhappy with his fitness. India’s manager, Anirudh Chaudhry, later denied the story but some of India’s players have been rather too eager to avoid the fray all summer.
Some of the decisions made for Thursday’s match looked pretty barmy too, such as why did the recently arrived and patently unfit RP Singh leapfrog Munaf Patel, an original pick in the squad? And if Amit Mishra is your specialist spinner, why bowl Suresh Raina, a part-time spinner, first?
Indeed, almost everything India have done during this series has defied the logic Fletcher used to apply as England’s coach, but then it might be because he is no longer a chief but an Indian.
If the tourists looked without hope, it was not all hopeless. A feisty second spell by Ishant Sharma at least showed someone in the side possessed a pulse. A surprise bouncer from him was sharp enough to strike Strauss’s helmet and break a bit off. The England captain seemed unfazed by the strike and immediately called for a replacement, but it is unusual to see him struck as he usually pulls the short ball well.
Even Sharma could not take England’s opening pair out of their comfort zone often enough to make them fear for their wickets. Once a batsman knows that a hundred is virtually guaranteed providing he does not do anything really stupid, he removes all risk from the process and simply bats time.
It is a part of the Graham Gooch effect and something Gooch, now 58, evolved when he was a player. When he first represented England, Gooch was an attacking batsman who wanted to dominate bowlers and, if possible, humiliate them. This approach was not without its successes but it was only once he realised that if he batted for 60 overs a hundred would almost certainly follow that he began to set records with his run-scoring.
To aid this new approach he got fitter, training obsessively whenever an opportunity presented itself. His love of jam doughnuts at Essex was well known, though it developed into something of a Faustian pact under his new regime — a five-mile run and then a doughnut or a doughnut first then a five-mile run? That was the question.
Gooch’s mantra at the time - “If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail” - was trotted out with deadpan earnestness to anyone keen to know the reasons for his new-found success. His mood is much lighter now and his banter sharp, but if Andy Flower was keen to appoint the personification of his hard-work philosophy, Gooch with his tireless work with the current players, was the perfect man.
He may have done too good a job, as his England record of 8,900 Test runs is bound to be overtaken by several of the current team, though Cook, his protégé at Essex, is the favourite to go furthest past it. Cook, who is approaching 5,900 runs, certainly has a better average (Gooch’s was 42), the left-hander moving it past 50 during Thursday’s innings at the Oval.
“I won’t be the top scorer much longer at this rate, but that’s not important,” Gooch said. “I will be delighted if anyone goes past my record because that means England are winning games.”
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