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By the time Ben Stokes extended his hand, England had exhausted its.
The host had tried swing, seam, short balls, and long spells. It had coaxed, cajoled, and, as the final hour arrived, hoped. And yet, as the England captain approached India’s unbeaten pair of Washington Sundar and Ravindra Jadeja with an offer of truce on the final afternoon in Manchester, it was declined. Firmly.
This was the fourth Test of a finely poised series. India, trailing 1–2, had spent the better part of five sessions clawing its way out from under. The deciding fifth Test, at The Oval, loomed just three days away. There was logic in Stokes’ gesture. There was resolve in India’s refusal.
There is, rightly, much talk about the “spirit of cricket”. It is often treated as a lofty idea, upheld or undermined by grand gestures. But most of cricket’s spirit resides in the mundane: how a batter walks away from a caught-behind, how a fielder reacts to a poor decision, how a team defends a draw when a win is out of reach.
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India had been asked to do something almost anachronistic in this era of T20 muscle memory: bat five sessions to save a Test. And it did so without fuss or controversy. On a day when England expected cracks to appear, all it found were dead ends.
So, when Jadeja and Sundar declined the early handshake, it was not a rejection of sportsmanship but an assertion of something more grounded: the right to finish the job, on their terms. A century apiece beckoned. The bowlers, meanwhile, would have to carry their burdens just a little longer.
That small act acquired a little more colour in the post-match retelling. The stump mic caught a voice, later attributed to Stokes, asking: “Jaddu, do you want to get a Test hundred against Brook and Duckett?” Jadeja responded, “What do you want me to do, just walk off?” To which Zak Crawley, never one to miss a cue, offered: “You can, just shake your hand.”
And then came the theatre.
Brook, fresh from playing supporting actor on the stump mic, was handed the ball. This was cricket as a gesture, a theatrical shrug dressed up as a spell. The deliveries floated down like reluctant emails. The fielders loitered with the listlessness of extras waiting to be cut. Jadeja and Sundar, having already declined the earlier invitation to vacate the crease, now helped themselves to the buffet. Each raised a century. The stand ballooned to 203. Brook’s spell will not be remembered as much for what it was, but for how it wasn’t anything else.
Amid all this, Stokes looked perplexed. Some saw it as a misreading of the moment; others as a glimpse of pragmatism disguised as nobility. But neither party was wrong. England sought rest and renewal. India sought reward and recognition. The game, in its quiet, unglamorous way, allowed space for both.
In the end, the draw was agreed upon with 10 overs left. The match, one of grit rather than glory, may not linger in highlight reels, but it deserves a place in cricket’s ever-complicated ledger of honour. For it showed that the spirit of the game is not always in the handshake itself, but sometimes in the reason it must wait.
