On the other side of a nearly identical situation to which he found himself in at the end of the Third Test, Mohammed Siraj made amends with the fifth wicket of his innings to clinch a series draw for India in the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy. 

With his 1113th ball bowled of the series, Siraj cleanly took the wicket of Gus Atkinson on a full toss to seal the closest win in India’s test history, by a margin of just six runs, and to ensure India would maintain a share of the first Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy series.

Nearly three weeks prior, Siraj entered India’s fourth innings chase alongside Ravindra Jadeja needing a stand of 46 runs for the last wicket to take the series lead. For his part he played valiantly, especially for an eleventh batsman, scoring four runs off 30 balls and acting as a strong partner for Jadeja to try and bring India back on the strength of his bat. The pair lasted 13.2 overs before Siraj middled a ball from Shoaib Bashir that somehow came off his bat, rolled backwards, and hit the base of the stumps to knock over a bail that sealed a thrilling English victory by a 22-run margin. 

This time around, it was Siraj with the ball in hand facing England’s final pair of Atkinson and an injured Chris Woakes, having taken four wickets to that point already to help skittle a seemingly smooth England chase of 374 down from 301/3 and 332/4 all the way to 357/9. The pair scored 10 runs in the final 2 overs of the series before Siraj claimed his fifer with the final ball of the series to bring England’s collapse to an end at 367 all out, seven runs short of the target. Siraj’s efforts, combined with a fourfer in England’s first innings, earned him Man of the Match honors.

The win was India’s second of the series without star bowler Jasprit Bumrah, and marked a successful captaincy debut for the newly-appointed Shubman Gill. Gill scored 754 runs across the five matches to claim the Player of the Series for India, and proved his mettle on multiple occasions, not the least of which included a historic 430-run effort across both innings of the Second Test and a well-timed century in the fourth test to salvage a draw after a disastrous bowling effort from India.

India come away with 28 points out of a possible 60 from the series while England come away with 26 (deducted two points from the Third Test), with the two sides ranking third and fourth early on in the WTC table.