India vs England Match Highlights, 2nd Test (Day 4): India levels the series & goes one step further to make it into the World Test Championship finals

England was in an uncomfortable position losing three wickets for 53 runs and started the fourth day’s play by 429 runs behind the target. Chasing a record target of 482 runs, England got all out for 164 shortly after the fourth day’s lunch break. Three Indian spinners shared all the wickets. Virat Kohli’s team won the match by 317 runs.

England captain Joe Root and Daniel Lawrence were on wickets & fell under the pressure of the Indian bowlers coming to start the day’s game. However, captain Root was the faint dream of the English on the wicket. The team was also looking for something good from Ben Stokes. But nothing happened like that. The two Indian spinners– Ravichandran Ashwin & Axar Patel ground the England batsmen. Shortly after the game started for the day, Ashwin sent Lawrence back to the dressing room. He then showed the way to the pavilion to Ben Stokes before he got settled on the wicket. With picking up wickets usually, the visitors went to the lunch break with 116 runs for 6 wickets.

Returning from the break, debutant spinner Axar Patel turned captain Joe Root into Rahane’s catch. His innings of 33 from 92 balls did not have any impact on the Indians’ victory. After one over, left-arm spinner Axar Patel touched the milestone of picking up five-wickets in his debut Test by taking the wicket of Olly Stone. Virat Kohli’s team has also set another record in this Test. When Kuldeep picked up the wicket of Ben Foakes, the Indian bowlers picked up the 1000th wicket in the Test under captain Kohli.

Towards the end, Moeen Ali showed a bit of intention despite losing everything. He started with a six and a four off Kuldeep Yadav. He finished off his innings off Kuldeep as well. He hit a hat-trick of sixes in between this and also hit consecutive boundary & over-boundary respectively. Whenever it seemed that the record for the fastest fifty in Test cricket would be grabbed by this left-hander, Kuldeep’s ball sent him out of the field. The English all-rounder stopped by scoring 43 runs off 18 balls with 3 fours and 5 sixes. And England stopped at 164 runs. Axar Patel (5-60, 21 overs), Ravichandran Ashwin (3-53, 18 overs), and Kuldeep Yadav (2-25, 6.2 overs) took the wickets for India.

India levels the series by winning the second Test against England on a dusty wicket at the MA Chidambaram Stadium. With this invincible victory, India has moved up to the second position in the points list of the World Test Championship. England has dropped to the fourth position from the first. England now has no choice but to win the last two Tests of the series to make it into the final against New Zealand next June. A comparatively simple equation in front of the hosts – India will advance to the final if they win one of the last two Tests.

Playing XIs:

England – Rory Burns, Daniel Lawrence, Ben Stokes, Ollie Pope, Dominic Sibley, Joe Root (c), Ben Foakes (wk), Stuart Broad, Olly Stone, Jack Leach, Moeen Ali.

India – Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Rishabh Pant (wk), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli (c), Axar Patel, Mohammed Siraj, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ishant Sharma.

Scoreboard:

India (1st Innings) – 329/10 (95.5)

Fall of wickets: 1-0 (Shubman, 1.3 over), 2-85 (Pujara, 20.2 over), 3-86 (Kohli, 21.2 over), 4-248 (Rohit, 72.6 over), 5-249 (Rahane, 75.2 over), 6-284 (Ashwin, 82.3 over), 7-301 (Axar, 89.2 over), 8-301 (Ishant, 89.4 over), 9-325 (Kuldeep, 95.3 over), 10-329 (Siraj, 95.5 over)

England (1st Innings) – 134/10 (59.5)

Fall of wickets: 1-0 (Burns, 0.3 over), 2-16 (Sibley, 7.2 over), 3-23 (Root, 10.3 over), 4-39 (Lawrence, 17.6 over), 5-52 (Stokes, 23.2 over), 6-87 (Pope, 38.1 over), 7-105 (Moeen, 48.1 over), 8-106 (Stone, 49.2 over), 9-131 (Leach, 58.5 over), 10-134 (Broad, 59.5 over)

India (2nd Innings) – 286/10 (85.5)

Fall of wickets: 1-42 (Shubman, 11.2 over), 2-55 (Pujara, 19 over), 3-55 (Rohit, 21.1 over), 4-65 (Rishabh, 25.3 over), 5-86 (Rahane, 30.3 over), 6-106 (Axar, 36.1 over), 7-202 (Kohli, 65.4 over), 8-210 (Kuldeep, 67.6 over), 9-237 (Ishant, 76.4 over), 10-286 (Ashwin, 85.5 over)

England (2nd Innings) – 164/10 (54.2)

Fall of wickets: 1-17 (Sibley, 8.2 over), 2-49 (Burns, 15.6 over), 3-50 (Leach, 16.6 over), 4-66 (Lawrence, 25.1 over), 5-90 (Stokes, 37.6 over), 6-110 (Pope, 43.5 over), 7-116 (Foakes, 48.3 over), 8-116 (Root, 49.2 over), 9-126 (Stone, 51.1 over), 10-164 (Moeen, 54.2 over)

Result – India won by 317 runs

Player of the Match – Ravichandran Ashwin

The men in blue have made the series on. Predict the winner of the next matches & play on Baji!