Vizag: With utmost optimism and sense of application England began their day. England made India work hard for the first wicket of the day and Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes batted out almost a session without giving the slightest of opportunity to the Indian bowlers to pick up a wicket.
But when eventually Bairstow was cleaned up by a full length Umesh Yadav delivery after he had scored 53 of 152 balls and after Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes put together a 110 runs for the sixth wicket, Indian bowling attack headed by Ravichandran Ashwin wrapped up the tail in no time and from 190/6 when Jonny Bairstow was dismissed, England were all out for a 255 runs.
R Ashwin picked up another fifer, his first against England and finished with very impressive figures of 5/67. All other Indian bowlers chipped in with a wicket each. That left India with a massive 200 runs first innings lead, that meant even when James Anderson and Stuart Broad bowled, which is perhaps, the best opening spell of the series so far and managed to get three big wickets, India with the help of captain Virat Kohli’s responsible innings are a 298 runs ahead of England. Captain Virat in the process completed yet another half century and remained not out on 56 of 70 balls and is also involved in an unbeaten partnership of 58* along with Ajinkya Rahane.
The plan for India must be simple going into the fourth day, score some quick runs, bat for perhaps a session and a half or two and then get 10 wickets of England. However England will now look to reduce the time they need to bat to survive the match by not giving India easy runs. The stars of the day are definitely R Ashwin and Virat Kohli as far as India is concerned. However, Jonny Bairstow’s 54 and Ben Stokes’s 70 of 154 balls were highly commendable innings of great composure and application. The England fighting spirit was once again evident in the way James Anderson and Stuart Broad bowled.
In fact James Anderson and Stuart Broad bowled 14 overs between them giving 22 runs and picking up three wickets, reducing India to 40/3 when finally Virat and Ajinkya injected some momentum and stability in the innings.
Resuming from 98/3, India will definitely look to win the match. Are England at some corner of their minds, looking to win? Or are they playing for survival already?
Because very often once we start playing for survival, we become over defensive and end up losing the game. Day 4 will be one wonderful day of Test Match Cricket and a real “Test” for England.
