Rishabh Pant and Hardik Pandya show India blueprint for future with snapshot of glorious freneticism

Pandya and Pant only batted together for three overs. Just 18 deliveries separated the departures of Rohit and Pant. And yet, in those overs, panic levels rose among an entire cricketing country

There was a curious antithesis about the latter part of India’s run chase on Sunday. A sprint for the line became an evening saunter.

We’ve all been there: you gallop towards your car, knowing you have overextended your stay on the metre. As your legs build up ahead of steam, working to their maximum, you see the traffic warden by your vehicle, scribbling into his notebook.

You decide, according to the instinct of your gut that has previously served you so well, that this is a war you have no chance of winning. Your dash towards a fine you hope to escape becomes a slow, solemn walk. Your legs are tired.

By the time you have finally located the courage to drag your frustrated fury to your car, you realise that only now is your ticket being spelt out. If you had run, you’d have got there. You’d have been in your vehicle, reversing out of that tight space, jolting into the road and flying away.

It was a close one. You’d have been dangerously fortunate to get away with it, but because you had put everything into avoiding that pesky little sanction, a light – somewhere – has shone on you.

But you haven’t. You gave up when you thought it was a done deal. You plodded along, self-pitying, self-defeating, self-deprecating. You could have done no more, you tell yourself. There is nothing more irritating than watching that fine happen before your very eyes, when you are close enough almost to stroke its author.

You would rather be miles away – delayed on a plane, perhaps, knowing that there was little you could do. It makes that fine easier to pay when you are out by an hour than within screaming distance.

^{Pant swung himself off his feet at one stage}

And that, by the roundabout medium of parking fines, takes us back to Edgbaston, where India lost their unbeaten record on Sunday and where they will hope to rectify a peculiar effort on Tuesday.

What seemed so unusual about the finale to their defeat by England was its steep diminuendo; for so long, the host nation were petrified. Even with the dismissals of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya and Rishabh Pant had come to the crease.

To return to the tale of that illegally parked car, these two – Pandya and Pant – are the sprinters. They are not paying any fine. Don’t be ridiculous. The worst that might happen to them is they might trip over their own laces as they race each other to be the first to the car.

When they were together, everything happened at a different speed. It was a speed not even seen when Jonny Bairstow and Jason Roy were swatting India’s feted spinners well beyond Edgbaston – small boundaries or not.

Pandya and Pant only batted together for three overs. Just 18 deliveries separated the departures of Rohit and Pant. And yet, in those overs, panic levels rose among an entire cricketing country. This was, arguably, England’s biggest day of cricket on home soil since that final day of the Ashes at The Oval back in 2005. And it was in danger of being decimated by two stars of a different universe.

There are Duracell Bunnies with less energy than these two. This was freneticism with a difference; that difference – and it was only there for three overs – was that it was a frenzied calmness. It was, ironically, resemblant of MS Dhoni’s best days.

It was disorganised chaos, but with a tinge of order. Bats swung – at one point out of Pant’s grasp, batsmen cantered, fielders threw themselves here, there and everywhere. It was a glimpse to a fabulous future. Pandya does not look like a man capable of such power. Pant looks capable of just about anything. His Indian Premier League form was an astounding rewriting of logic.

^{Dhoni was criticised in many quarters for his innings}

This was the highlights package to present late into the night on Channel Four. It was after the watershed, for one. But it was also the kind of cricket that transcends its sport. Who could fail to be entertained by two flailing swashbucklers, playing on instinct and little more? The hum you could hear behind the crash-bang-wallop of bat on ball was a petrified tension.

That kind of fear is not limited to cricket; if you were English or Indian, just for the few precious moments of Pant and Pandya’s stand, you could not help but be transfixed.

The greatest drama was in the two characters themselves: Pant and Pandya are all-or-nothing men. At times, it is difficult to ascertain as to whether they have any further idea than the viewers themselves of what is coming next, of where they plan to deposit the next delivery.

Three times in a row, Pandya planted Woakes for boundaries. He slapped with a rogue authority, taking down England’s dependable seamer.

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But then, Pant flipped Liam Plunkett out to Woakes. He dived. He held a superb catch. The warden was getting ever closer. He was winning. But there was still no ticket.

For all of Pant and Pandya’s bluster, they had never truly crept ahead of their ticketeer. But they had tried. They had run for their car – a car that, in truth, was always well ahead of them.

Dhoni hit India’s first maximum came in the final over. India lost by 31 runs. It is never this simple, of course, but a six in each of the final five overs is almost standard in today’s white-ball cricket. That equation would have seen India all but home.

The key could have been in the ignition. But a sprint had turned to a saunter.

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