FOURTH TEST India are
Pujara hot to Trott as tourists’ ‘New Wall’
AT AGEAS BOWL MOEEN ALI gave the selectors a reminder they could not ignore last week prior to this fourth Test.
It had come nearly five months after he was dropped in New Zealand bereft of confidence, runs and wickets.
Yesterday the off-spinner repaid the decision to recall him with five wickets to keep England in this fourth Test.
A week after a double ton and eight wickets for Worcestershire, Moeen’s intervention here ripped the guts out of India’s first-innings effort.
Three wickets in 10 balls either side of tea – including two in two – and five in all reduced India from a menacing 181-4 to 227-9.
Unfortunately for England, the heart of India’s batting proved just out of his or anyone’s reach as Cheteshwar Pujara, with only his second Test century outside of Asia, stuck around to establish a first-innings lead of 27.
At the close Alastair Cook and Keaton Jennings survived four overs as the shadows lengthened to chip six runs off that.
For all that Pujara’s resistance coloured a decent day for England with a tinge of regret, there was no mistaking that without Moeen’s 5-63 Joe Root’s men could already have been facing defeat.
At times elegant and flighty, at others destructive and profligate, Moeen has also struggled with the burden of being labelled England’s leading spinner. At 31, perhaps the time has come to stop trying.
In Australia last winter he was reduced to a shell of a player, hollowed out by the bullying of dominant batsmen, with his five wickets costing 115 a piece and his 179 runs averaged out at 19.88 for each visit to the crease.
After failing to take a wicket in the first Test against the Kiwis in Auckland, Moeen was put out of his misery.
Judging by yesterday and his momentum-changing 40 with the bat, the rest has done the trick.
As much as Moeen delivered with the ball – it was perhaps no surprise his pace and flight oozed confidence on a track where he took 8-129 against the same opposition four years ago – this was a day which belonged not exclusively to him, nor England for that matter.
Like Moeen, Pujara has had time on the sidelines after being dropped for the series opener at Edgbaston by Indian selectors (ie Virat Kohli) who were clearly WHAT would England give for a batsman like Cheteshwar Pujara?
The Indian will never win points for artistic merit but what he lacks in style he makes up for in substance.
Pujara’s century was the glue that held together India’s first innings in Southampton from No3 in the order, a position England have been struggling to fill since the retirement of Jonathan Trott in 2015. frustrated by his less-thanimpressive strike rate. Judging by the ovation on the India balcony after Jasprit Bumrah was the last wicket to fall, on this occasion Pujara’s unbeaten 132 at 51.36 was fast enough. In particular his shepherding of the tail was masterful, allowing India to add 78 for the last two wickets (his contribution was 54) and his mastery against spin was nearly perfect, analysis from Amid all the talk of England’s batting woes on day one of this fourth Test, there was a lively debate on social media about the merits of recalling Ian Bell, a 36-year-old.
Bell did score a double hundred for Warwickshire against Glamorgan this week. But the talk of him clouded the issue that England are desperate to find a successor to Trott, who plays alongside Bell at Warwickshire but whose international career was cut short after he suffered from depression.
Like Trott, the rock at three who helped England to the top of the world Test rankings in 2011, Pujara, right, is an old-fashioned batsman whose primary aim is to soften up the