Reality check needed for pie-in-the-sky England - Chris Waters

The number India wanted - or at least determined was sufficient when they chose to declare their second innings - was 557, with four-and-a-bit sessions for England to “go and get them”.

To put that into context, the highest successful run-chase in the 147-year history of Test cricket is 418, while only once has 300 been chased to win a Test in India.

Sure enough, as England collapsed to 122 all-out in 39.4 overs to lose by 434 runs with a scheduled eight balls remaining on day four, Duckett’s words were made to look stupid.

There are some mighty fine players in this England side - not least Duckett, who made an outstanding first innings hundred.

But to the charge of hubris, some of them might just have to plead guilty; it was India’s biggest win by a runs margin, in fact, and England’s second-heaviest defeat behind their 562-run hammering against Don Bradman’s Australia at The Oval in 1934.

Bazball was always going to be exposed by the nature of the beast, as likely to fail spectacularly on occasions as succeed spectacularly, and exposed it was at the Niranjan Shah Cricket Stadium.

From 224-2 in reply to India’s first innings score of 445, during which Joe Root’s drop of centurion Rohit Sharma at slip proved pivotal, England were well placed to fashion a lead and put the hosts under pressure in the third innings.

Then came the already infamous ‘Reverse Ramp of Rajkot’, with Root playing one of the least distinguished shots of his distinguished career, followed by a sharp decline to 319 all-out and a deficit of 126.

By the time that Duckett opened his “north and south” at the end of day three - just the latest, in fact, of a series of preposterous pronouncements from him and his team-mates along the lines of no mountain is too high, nor bridge too far - that deficit had risen to 322 and the hosts still had eight wickets left.

For much of a bruising day four, they set about doing what England should have done, wearing down the bowlers and building on the lead.

Yashasvi Jaiswal, a man whose first name this correspondent for some reason finds as difficult to type accurately as England have found him difficult to bowl to, returned from the back spasm that forced him to retire hurt on 104 the previous evening to go to his second double hundred in as many Tests, top-scoring with an unbeaten 214 out of 430-4 declared, well-supported by Shubman Gill’s 91 and Sarfaraz Khan’s undefeated 68.

Jaiswal’s 12 sixes - to go with 14 fours during an innings that spanned 236 balls - saw him equal the world record for the most sixes in a Test innings by Wasim Akram for Pakistan against Zimbabwe in 1996, and included three in a row off poor old James Anderson.

To put Jaiswal’s dazzling dozen into perspective, that was one more than Sir Alastair Cook managed in the entirety of his 161-Test career; how the game has changed and moved on even from when Cook made his debut in India in 2006.

Jaiswal scored more runs in his latest tour-de-force than Root and Jonny Bairstow have managed in 12 innings combined during the series, and if England were to have any chance of threatening the target, let alone reaching it, the Yorkshire pair would likely have had to have a big say.

As it was, both were lbw sweeping the left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja, which left England 50-5 - which then became 50-7 when Ben Stokes fell in similar style and Rehan Ahmed launched to long-on.

The early damage was done just before tea, which England reached at 18-2 with both openers back in the pavilion.

Duckett called for a single to mid-on that wasn’t there, was rightly sent back and then sent on his way by a combination of Mohammed Siraj, the fielder, and Dhruv Jurel, the wicketkeeper, and Zak Crawley pinned lbw by Jasprit Bumrah.

Ollie Pope was smartly taken at slip to give Jadeja his first wicket, and after the middle order was blown away with the ease of a cyclone disturbing a small pile of leaves, Ben Foakes was smartly caught behind off Jadeja before Ravichandran Ashwin - back from a family emergency - bowled Tom Hartley off an inside edge.

Mark Wood blitzed 33 off 15 balls with seven boundaries to lift the total beyond 100, but that sort of Bazball definitely couldn’t last. Fittingly, Jaiswal took the catch at long-off when Wood opened his shoulders again to give Jadeja his fifth wicket to go with his first innings hundred, an all-round performance that won him player-of-the-match.

For England, the only consolation was a day off ahead of Friday’s fourth Test.

Anyone know of a good golf course in Ranchi?