Indian spinners wrap up win over England

Ravichandran Ashwin was back in his element with yet another five-wicket haul, setting up a flawless launchpad for skipper Virat Kohli to extend India’s lead to 298 runs against England on the third day of the second cricket Test here.

England’s approach suited Cook and his opening partner Haseeb Hameed in their stand of 75 in more than 50 overs.

“When you have 400 runs on the board it is not easy to chase in India”.

“For us to be in this Test match going into day five is a huge credit”. But it once more demonstrated why cricketers of the extraordinaire league always prefer success in Test cricket to any other format.

On a hat-trick, Ashwin was brought in the fifth over but Cook played him without any fuss, while Hameed held firm as England managed to keep themselves unscathed in the second session.

India were dismissed for 204 in 63.1 overs at lunch after resuming their second innings at 98-3. [Duckett has scores of 13, 5 and 0 in his three innings in India so far] I think he is. “As a fast bowler you have got to have niggles”.

“We saw that in this match too as we had a total of 450-460”. Jimmy Anderson and I talked about trying to get batsmen into a routine of facing a slower pace and then hitting them with a quicker ball coming into the stumps.

“We have very clear plans”. The two played immensely important roles as the visitors threatened twice in the course of the day to wrest the initiative back from the hosts.

“England are a side we do not take for granted”.

“We thought they would come out with more intent”, said the Indian skipper. But we are prepared for it.

The 28-year-old asserted that the Indians are happy with their performance on Sunday as they have managed to implement most of their strategy and have taken the upper hand. Here are the things we learned from today’s play. In Rajkot, we got over 700 runs. As a fielding unit, we knew when to opt for DRS. We don’t know enough about the injury yet because it’s quite an unusual one and you’re speaking to the wrong person about it.

“We set our stall out pretty clearly that from the start of the innings that we wanted to take it as deep as possible”, Cook told reporters. “We’ve been saying for two days that someone would eventually get a low ball”.

Bairstow nonetheless said: “I think there are runs to be had on the pitch, when it comes to when we bat”. Cracks are opening up and it will be hard. Combining leg-cutters with full paced deliveries, Broad continued to take advantage of the pronounced uneven bounce that was evident throughout the fourth day.

“The foot is sore but I have got to play a Test, haven’t I?” said Broad. They also dismissed Alastair Cook in the last over of the day and with a minimum of 90.4 more left in the game and 317 runs in the bank, they are confident of going 1-0 up in the series. “We maintained a similar field throughout”.

The pair’s damage control exercise yielded 110 runs on this occasion before Umesh Yadav bowled Bairstow (53) with an inswinging yorker nearly at the stroke of lunch.