The third test match between India and England saw England dominating the entire test match , each and every session was won by England. There was not a single session in which India competed toe to toe with England. Just before the start Ishant Sharma became unavailable for the Test match owing to knee injury. He was replaced by Pankaj Singh , the Rajasthan Pacer who has given consistent performances year after year in the Indian domestic circuit. The pitch was believed to be bowler friendly on the first day . Cook won the toss and took a bold decision to bat first. This gutsy decision did pay off assisted by some clumsy catching in the first session of the test match.
When Cook was batting at 14 he was dropped by Ravindra Jadeja off Pankaj Singh's bowling , Cook went on to make 95. Gary Ballance got a reprieve when he was adjudged not out but the replay and snickometer showed some nick. Pankaj Singh's tough luck continued when a clum LBW of Ian Bell was not given by the umpire. The first day ended with England scoring 247 for just 2 wickets the next 2 days the pitch was very good to bat on. England went on to make 569 for 7.
Almost all Indian batsmen got a start except Sikhar Dhavan in the first innings but not a single one of them went on to make a big score. India had 8 recognized batsman (even Ravindra Jadeja must be regarded as a batsman , he has triple centuries in first class cricket) out of them 7 got a start , scored high 20s or 30s at least one of them should have carried on to score a big hundred and at least one other batsman should have scored 70+ but unfortunately that didn't happen . The pitch was very good to bat on , It was sad to see Indian batsmen playing lose shots and giving away their wickets to the offspin of Moeen Ali in the first innings. India ended up with a score of mere 330.
In the second innings the bowling was not penetrative enough , although Bhuvaneshwar Kumar got some swing his balls were not carrying to the slips or to the wicketkeeper. Mohommad Sami did not have a good test match either. However the English bowlers particularly Anderson, Broad and Moeen Ali bowled well and got the wickets.
It was really sad to see Indian batting in the second innings after a decent start Murli Vijay simply gave his wicket away taking a run casually. This opened the floodgates and on the evening of the fourth day Indian batsmen gave wickets to the likes of Joe Root and Moeen Ali. The fifth day did not see any real fight from the Indian batters wickets fell at regular intervals with part timer Moeen Ali being the pick of the bowlers making good use of the rough on the 5th day track he took 6 wickets in the innings followed by Anderson who took 2 wickets and Joe Root got one wicket .
It was definitely a bad decision to drop Stuart Binny since India lost a medium pacer who could have been useful also Rohit Sharma's batting was far from anything to be called impressive. In the first innings he ended up giving a simple catch to the mid off fielder and in the second innings he chased a ball outside the offstump that could have been easily left.
I hope in the next Test Match better sense prevails and we see Stuart Binny and Ashvin replacing ,Rohit Sharma and Jadeja respectively. Jadeja is a batsman who bowls while Ashwin is a bowler who bats a bit also England has 6 left handed batsman , Ashvin is likely to be far more effective against them than Jadeja. Also India's batting has been a big letdown in this match the batsmen gave away the wickets when they were set in the first innings and in the second inning 7 wickets were taken by part time spinners, of batsmen who are believed to be the best players of spin in the world. Hopefully Ishant Sharma will recover from his injury and the batsmen will not repeat the same mistakes in the next test match . Hopefully we would see at least 2 centuries from Indian batsmen coupled with a good bowling performance.
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