After India lost their famed middle order in a span of a few minutes on Day 2, it was the lower order that stabilized the ship on Day 3. Although Rishabh Pant fell in the first session, KL Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja stayed put till lunch. After Rahul’s dismissal post-lunch, Jadeja and the tail-enders ensured India a 95-run lead. Jasprit Bumrah hit his top score of 28 in Tests, which included a magnificent hit for a six.
England were on 25 for 0 before rain forced early stumps on Day 3 after 49.2 overs of cricket. Rory Burns was on 11 not out, while Dom Sibley was on 9 not out.
The start of Day 4 did not pan out the way England would have hoped. Mohammed Siraj and Jasprit Bumrah removed Burns and Zak Crawley in the first session, but captain Joe Root and Dominic Sibley slowly turned things around. At lunch, England were on 119/2 with Root (56*) and Sibley (27*) at the crease.
Later in the day, Root went on to score a fine century before England were bundled out for 303, thus handing India a target of 209 runs to win. Bumrah picked up five wickets, while Mohammed Siraj and Shardul Thakur chipped in with two each. Let us look at the top talking points from the day’s play.
Joe Root completes 1000 Test runs in a calendar year
The English skipper went past 1000 runs in a calendar year and in the process, he also became the second batter to cross 1000 Test runs in the fewest days after Dennis Amiss. While Amiss took 186 days to score 1000 runs, Root took 219. The third and fourth on the list is Graham Coach (221) and Dennis Compton (228).
Root’s stats show that he loves to bat against India. England’s leading run-scorer in international cricket, Root has six centuries and 11 fifties against Virat Kohli’s men.
He started 2021 with a double century against Sri Lanka in Galle in the first Test, and followed that with another hundred in the second Test. On the tour of India, Root smashed another classy double-century in the first Test in Chennai, but his form began to wane in the next few games against India and New Zealand. What followed was a series of 12 consecutive innings without a half-century. Root was under pressure ahead of the series against India, but returned to form with a half-century in the first innings and a century in the second – his 21st Test century and the first in England in three years.
Jasprit Bumrah bags a fifer
Bumrah took his sixth five-wicket haul in Test cricket and helped India bowl out England for 303 runs in the second innings. Sibley was his first victim, followed by Crawley and Root. He then dismissed Sam Curran and Stuart Broad in consecutive balls before missing out on a hat-trick ball.
With 92 Test wickets, Bumrah now tops the list of most wickets by an Indian pacer after 21 matches. Bumrah is followed on the list by Irfan Pathan (81), Kapil Dev (71) and Mohammed Shami (70).
His bowling figures of 9-110 from the first Test are now also the second best figures by an Indian in Tests against England. With 10-188, Chetan Sharma heads the list.
With four wickets in the first innings and five in the second, Bumrah has certainly been the star of India’s bowling in the first Test. But he did a fair bit of work with the bat too. Earlier in the game, the pacer scored 28 in 34 balls, which included three consecutive boundaries and a maximum. This, however, wasn’t the first time when he made his bat talk. Last year, Bumrah scored a half-century against Australia A in a three-day pink-ball practise match in Sydney.
India’s pace attack lives up to expectations
All the four Indian fast bowlers picked up at least one wicket each in both the innings of this match. In England’s first innings, Bumrah picked up four wickets, Shami three, Thakur two and Siraj one. In the second innings, Bumrah picked five, Thakur and Siraj picked two while Shami chipped in with one. In all, the pacers took 20 wickets in this game. This was only the second instance of fast bowlers taking all 20 wickets for India in a Test match. The first time this happened was in 2018 against South Africa away from home.
India need 157 more runs to win
India ended day 4 at 52 for 1. Indian openers Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul started off well, with the latter hitting some fine shots. Rahul scored 26 off 38 balls in swinging conditions while facing the likes of James Anderson and Broad, before an unplayable delivery from the latter cut short his stay in the middle. At stumps, Sharma and Cheteshwar Pujara are not out on 12 runs each.
India now need 157 more runs to win the first Test match and take a 1-0 lead in the five-match series. Chasing in the fourth innings isn’t an easy job, and the visiting bowlers will be looking for some early wickets on Day 5 to put the hosts under pressure. While the first two hours of play on day 5 will hint which team wins, India have done reasonably well so far after scoring 52 runs for the loss of one wicket in challenging conditions.
If rain permits, we have an exciting day of cricket coming up at Trent Bridge tomorrow.
