Third Test, Day 1: India Dominate Proceedings As England Lose Four In First Session
Nov 26, 2016 at 12:04 PM
A few days back when Alastair Cook was asked about the role of toss in defining the course of the game, he replied that toss is not that much crucial and has no impact on the game. Probably he was right because if that was to be the case, then England would not have been four down on a score of 92 in 29 overs.
After winning the toss on what seems to be slow and dry pitch England decided to bat first, keeping a simple tactic mind which is to pile up runs on the board and then ask India to chase it but this time that was not the case as England failed to replicate their batting performance of the first Test match. They got a good start as they were sitting on a comfortable score of 32 and there was just one ball to go for the completion of the first set of 10 overs before a ball containing extra bit of bounce from Umesh Yadav took young Haseeb Hameed by surprise and took an edge of his bat before going towards slips in the hands of Ajinkya Rahane.
The second wicket followed soon as Joe Root, one of the responsible batsmen of England played a careless shot to offer his wicket to Jayant Yadav. It was short of length delivery which Root decided to pull. The horizontal bat failed to make contact with the ball and the ball went onto touch his pads which were installed in front of stumps. It was none less than a gift for the Indian team.
Lbw pic.twitter.com/o6utRbX91B
— Mahendra Singh Dhoni (@cricketworms) November 26, 2016
After his dismissal, it was redemption time for R. Ashwin who dropped Alastair Cook off Shami. Ashwin lured Cook to play a cut shot but instead it took an edge of Cook’s bat and Parthiv Patel showed no blues and grabbed the cash easily and quite quickly, though.
Moeen Ali, the next man and Jonny Bairstow shared 36 runs for the fourth wicket and it seemed like we might not see any other wicket before Lunch before Virat Kohli played a trump card and invited Mohammed Shami to bowl. He did not disappoint as he bowled a shorter one to Ali who in a hurry just pulled it but could not clear the distance and Vijay made no mistake to grasp it ahead of the boundary rope.
Indian team got four crucial wickets in the first session of the day but they have to be wary of the in-form man Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes as they both have the ability to score healthy runs. Indian bowlers need one wicket in the first five over of next session as this will make their way easy in the future session.