England’s tireless efforts were finally rewarded to leave a tetchy third Test against India hanging in the balance after three days at Lord’s.<\/b><\/p>\n
In sweltering conditions, England took the last four India wickets for 11 runs to dismiss the tourists for 387, meaning the scores were level on first innings.<\/p>\n
The home side looked set to be defied by Ravindra Jadeja, but after he was caught down the leg side by Chris Woakes for 72, England surged.<\/p>\n
Woakes, so prolific on this ground, ended with three wickets, while Jofra Archer’s pace deserved more than the 2-52 he claimed on Test comeback.<\/p>\n
In the lengthening shadows, Zak Crawley used some creative time-wasting tactics to ensure England faced only one over, bowled by Jasprit Bumrah. Tempers flared, England closed 2-0.<\/p>\n
Earlier, opener KL Rahul completed a controlled 100 and Rishabh Pant made 74, while Jadeja shared vitals stands of 72 with Nitish Kumar Reddy and 50 with Washington Sundar.<\/p>\n
As usual, England found inspiration from captain Ben Stokes. Stokes produced a stunning direct hit to run out Pant and, in a tireless spell after tea, found the venom to have Reddy caught behind.<\/p>\n
Crucially, England had already missed three opportunities to run out Reddy and one to dismiss Jadeja.<\/p>\n
Off-spinner Shoaib Bashir spent a prolonged period off the field with an injury to his left little finger.<\/p>\n
It is not his bowling hand, so he should be fit for the fourth innings, when he would be important in a potential England push for victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England’s tireless efforts were finally rewarded to leave a tetchy third Test against India hanging in the balance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4101],"tags":[1406,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-259766","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}