Close to the tea interval, the overcast sky above was beginning to turn dark. The floodlight near the MS Dhoni pavilion was turned on and India were in the middle of a testing period of play. Yashasvi Jaiswal had Rajat Patidar for company but the right-hander wasn’t looking very assured in the middle as England gave nothing away in a session where runs were difficult to come by. More than the pitch playing tricks, it was the channel in which Shoaib Bashir bowled, and the smart field placements Ben Stokes had for different Indian batters, which didn’t allow the Indian innings to get any moment whatsoever.
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While the English skipper preferred in-out placements for in-form Jaiswal, he stuck to a very tight leg-side trap for the right-handers. Bashir stuck to the stump line and kept firing them in towards the good-length region. Odd one would hit the crack, some would bounce more than usual and the men in attacking positions on the leg-side continued to put more pressure on the batters. There was added pressure on Patidar because of the 5 & 0, 32 & 9 outings in the previous two Tests and he would have warmed the bench had KL Rahul regained fitness. That, fortunately for Patidar, didn’t happen and the 30-year-old got another opportunity.
It was a make-or-break innings for the right-hander but it didn’t quite go his way on a greyish afternoon. A Bashir delivery skidded off the surface, turned a fair bit and trapped him in front of the stumps. There was a desperate review but the umpire’s call went England’s way and India were three down. The Indian think-tank didn’t stick to the left-right combination and sent out Ravindra Jadeja. Fresh from a hundred in his last innings, the left-hander hit some meaty sixes but could last only 12 deliveries as the offie, using his extra height, generated extra bounce from the surface and Jadeja could only manage to present a comfortable catch to Ollie Pope at short-leg.
Four down, the sky turned darker but there was a loud cheer, probably loudest of the day, as Sarfaraz Khan walked out to bat. The batters changed but England didn’t deviate from their plan and kept attacking the new man in. Fields became tighter, there were no freebies to be dispatched and the tricks off the pitch kept the batters guessing. At 130/4, panic had already crept into the Indian innings and two mix-ups between Jaiswal and Sarfaraz early in their partnership showed that. More than Jaiswal losing his composure, it was the right-hander who looked very iffy from the start.
There was this urge in him to get to the other end and he tried stealing singles out of nowhere. A quick sprint and then a desperate dive, where he was lucky to get some part of the bat behind the line, kept him alive but the inevitable was on the cards. The period of play did upset Jaiswal’s concentration too and he was undone by Bashir with a delivery which kept a tad low.
161/5, Jaiswal was out for 73 and England were sniffing a big lead. Only 10 runs were added when Sarfaraz gave Hartley his first wicket of the match and England tightened their grip over the match.
Unlike the opening day, where the pitch had some bite for the seamers, the cracks and dry nature came into play on the second day. Right from the start, there was nothing in it for the quicks and Ravindra Jadeja did show the way with his four-wicket haul in the first innings. Bashir took the cue from the world’s leading all-rounder and repeated the drill, with the opposite hand. Both Jadeja and Bashir had just the ideal pace for this surface and extracted more than the other spinners, from both sides, could.
It was difficult to keep him away from the ball and Stokes kept him on from one end for 31 overs on the trot. With day figures of 32-4-84-4, the 20-year-old helped England thoroughly dominate the day’s play and it could have been much worse for the hosts had Jaiswal not scored a solid 73. Dhruv Jurel and Kuldeep Yadav did fight it out in the last hour and India would hope the pair can get them close to England’s total otherwise it will get really difficult for Rohit Sharma & Co. to stage a comeback in this Test. The sky remained grey when stumps were called and both teams would hope it remains that way for the remainder of the Test because if the sun comes out in its full glory, the pitch will definitely become a nightmare for the batters.
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