Cricket: England, India, Bazball and cracked pitches

Come 4am tomorrow morning in Ranchi, England’s Bazball revolution sees its next chapter get underway. Because in the fourth Test between India and England there’s now a series on the line for the first time.

The hosts lead the tourists 2-1 having won the second and third Tests. England, on the other hand, miraculously won the first Test before succumbing to a monumental defeats in Vizag Rajkot last time out.

So this is it for England: it is their first Bazball tour away to one of the other members of the Big Three – India, Australia and themselves – and it could be lost within the next five days.

We have seen how captain Ben Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum have backed the Bazball ideal come rain or shine, so that’s at least one certainty for fans to wake up early with the knowledge of.

Here’s what else we know so far:

The teams

England

• Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes (c), Ben Foakes (wk), Tom Hartley, Ollie Robinson, James Anderson, Shoaib Bashir.

India

• Rohit Sharma (c), Jasprit Bumrah, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, KL Rahul, Rajat Patidar, Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel (wk), KS Bharat (wk), R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohd. Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Akash Deep

The pitch

There, as usual, have been discussions about the quality of the Indian pitches, with Stokes describing it as “interesting” and “like nothing I’ve ever seen before”.

India batting coach Vikram Rathour rebuked this, though, stating: “Every time we play in India, there’s question marks on the pitch.

“It’s a typical Indian wicket, there are cracks, this wicket always had cracks.

“It will turn, but how much it will turn and from when we are not sure.”

How to watch England

The fourth Test will be on TNT Sports in the UK from 4am with host Kate Mason joined by former England international duo Alastair Cook and Steven Finn.

The radio rights are with TalkSport for this series.