Only Test cricket can provide a day of extraordinary sporting drama and then deny a full-house of more than 27,000 spectators a result.
Only a five-match Test series can offer 24 days of the most compelling cricket, then cut short the action and come back for a 25th and final one with the result of the series in the balance and the deciding game nearing its natural thrilling conclusion.
The final Test of England vs India this summer, one of the best series in years, was on a knife-edge at The Oval in south London on Sunday evening when the umpires decided that a short, sharp shower of rain at 5.29pm was enough to rob that enthralled crowd of what was building up to be the most exciting and fitting of finishes.
England looked to be taking their redefinition of the Test run-chase to another level on the match’s penultimate day by romping towards their improbable target of 374.
Then India threatened to turn both game and series on their heads by dismissing Harry Brook and Joe Root, who had added a masterful 195 off just 211 balls together, and rendering England near-strokeless with a herculean bowling effort.
The stage could not have been more perfectly set.
England, on 339 for six, needed just 35 more for a 3-1 series win, but where earlier the runs were flowing, now they had all but dried up. Jamie Smith and Jamie Overton were struggling to even get the ball off the square.
India, meanwhile, were being roared on by the large number of their supporters in the arena and knew they had only effectively to take another three wickets, with England bowler Chris Woakes in his whites in the dressing room but with his left-arm in a sling because of a shoulder injury suffered on the first day of this match that has kept him out of action since.
Bad light and rain seemed only to have brought a temporary stop to proceedings, but then it emerged regulations stated the game had to resume by 6.42pm — the scheduled close of play.
The rain had stopped and the sky was beginning to clear but, at 6.03pm, head groundsman Lee Fortis, who had clashed with India coach Gautam Gambhir before this match, told the umpires his staff would not be able to remove the covers and make the field ready again in time for play to restart in the next 39 minutes.
So that was that until Monday.
(Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)
It is infuriating why that had to be the case.
Why could we not delay the resumption a little longer, then try to give spectators who had paid between £95 and £160 ($126-$212) for their day at the cricket a proper finish? There seems to be no explanation other than ‘Sorry, mate. Rules are rules’.
That is a desperately bad look for the ultimate form of the game at a time when it is threatened like never before by the rise of short-format cricket and its many franchises. One not helped by what appeared to be complete inaction from Fortis and his team in the minutes leading up to the announcement that this absorbing drama would go to a final day that should last less than an hour, whoever wins.
It says everything for the remarkable resilience of cricket fans that the majority in attendance seemed simply to shrug their shoulders, say, ‘That’s cricket for you,’ and make their way out into the streets of south London.
But it is not good enough.
A friend of mine told me his 20-year-old son had only recently been getting into Test cricket, so thrilling has this series been, but was left utterly deflated in front of his TV on Sunday evening when it became clear that play was over for the day. “What a wasted opportunity,” said my friend, a lifelong cricket fan. “My son has got into Test cricket big-time this summer but he said, ‘What an anti-climax,’ when they called it off. He can’t watch tomorrow, so he won’t be able to see how it all plays out.”
It was somehow inevitable that as soon as play was called off for the night, the weather improved. By 6.45pm or so, a resumption would have been perfectly possible.
Lovely evening at the Oval now… pic.twitter.com/fjGzfghZyD
— Paul Newman (@Paul_Newman66) August 3, 2025
It does not get dark in London at this time of year until around 8.30pm and, in any case, there are now floodlights at The Oval — and all the rest of English cricket’s major grounds. There should be no reason why play should not continue under artificial light. Test cricket cannot afford a farce like this.
“Still 20 minutes away from possible start time and everyone has their sunglasses on at the train station,” posted former England fast bowler and now commentator Stuart Broad on X. “Felt the supporters deserved to see a finish to that Test today. Felt a lazy decision to call it off at 6pm in my opinion. I wonder who makes it?”
At least former England captain Sir Alastair Cook saw the bright side.
“This benefits England massively,” said Cook on the BBC’s Test Match Special. “It is a hammer-blow for India. The atmosphere would have been unbelievable for India tonight. They were so on top. The only way England could get a run was a leg-bye.”
The crowd at least got most of their money’s worth on the fourth day before the powers that be, in their wisdom, robbed them of a finale.
Brook made the best of his 10 Test hundreds, even better than his triple century in Pakistan last year, and his first in the fourth innings of a Test, reaching three figures off just 91 balls. It only ended in bizarre fashion when he came down the pitch to Akash Deep and saw his bat fly out of his hands, Rishabh Pant-style, with the ball then looping gently to Mohammed Siraj, fielding in the covers.
Root made one of the most emotional of his 39 Test hundreds, taking from his pocket one of the white headbands that have been made for this Test in memory of his mentor, the late, great Graham Thorpe — who played at this ground for Surrey for almost 20 years — and looking to the skies in tribute.
Root dedicates his century to the late Graham Thorpe (Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)
But India refused to be beaten. Where once an England win had looked a formality and it was all about the ease with which they were racing to complete the second highest run-chase in their history, everything suddenly changed, as it can only do in Test cricket.
At the centre of that was the indefatigable Mohammed Siraj, the last fast bowler from either side still standing in this series once Woakes went down injured.
It looked as though Siraj had cost his side victory when he gave Brook a life on 19, treading on the boundary after catching him and instead handing him another six. But he kept running in all day and added another 26 overs to his exhaustive tally in this series while also playing the role of his former captain Virat Kohli in whipping up the India fans in the crowd to provide more noise.
We can only now come back to The Oval on Monday to see which one of these sides will come out on top and whether England will record their best series win under captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum, or whether India will have what would be a deserved share of the series.
It is just a crying shame we do not know the outcome of this match already.
(Top photo: Alex Davidson/Getty Images)
