Pujara and Pant hold fort to help India consolidate lead
India build on 132-run first-innings lead on Day 3 after Bairstow fights lone battle with 3rd Test ton in a row
KOLKATA: You don’t drop Ben Stokes twice, watch Jonny Bairstow blast your bowling to smithereens, lose Virat Kohli to a sensational delivery and still end the day with a smile. It doesn’t usually work that way.
Where India have prevailed over England so far is in countering a scene with an act, an hour of resurgence with a session or more of consolidation. Gifted two lives to Stokes? Don’t make it three. Pull off a phenomenal catch, better coming from the captain who misjudged the flight of the earlier one, and break a threatening stand. Conceded a hundred to Bairstow? Ask Mohammed Shami to stick to his line and the breakthrough will come.
And who better than Cheteshwar Pujara to grind out a passage of probing bowling? As usual, Kohli looked good as long as he batted, almost majestic while drilling Stuart Broad through cover for a boundary. Rishabh Pant left and left till he couldn’t do any more, skipping down the pitch and clobbering Broad through long on, sending him looking for cover.
But Pujara was a picture of concentration, putting everything into his defensive shots but not letting go of anything coming on to his pads, scoring a gritty fifty that thwarted England’s hopes of quickly snuffing out India’s batting. With two days to go, India have a lead of 257 runs with Pujara and Pant at the crease.
Only a few weeks ago,
England chased 299 in 50 overs so maybe India won’t want to get ahead of themselves. But if the discipline of their bowling was any indication, Stokes possibly had dug England into a hole the moment he chose to bowl at the toss. India have never lost a Test when they have had a lead of over 100. They have the bowling to keep that statistic unchanged.
A sound reminder of that came through in a disciplined display of patience and skill as India wore down England despite a few counter punches. It says a lot about a bowling attack that prises out a 132-run lead despite Bairstow’s hundred. Mohammed Siraj averaged 5.73 per over but took four wickets, Jasprit Bumrah didn’t add to his overnight tally of three wickets, Shardul Thakur removed Stokes while Shami took the all-important wicket of Bairstow to swing the Test decisively in India’s favour. Shami started the day with a maiden but England found their way out, mainly through a couple of boundaries Stokes clattered over the infield in an attempt to mess with the head of India’s bowlers. From there till Bairstow’s dismissal, England looked poised to close in on India’s first innings score.
Even till the time Sam Billings was batting, England could have been with a chance to run down the deficit to below hundred, but India kept chipping away at their batting. The seventh-wicket stand between Bairstow and Billings yielded 92 before Matthew Potts scored 19 at more than a run-a ball to take England to 284. India conceded 35 extras, including 13 no-balls and one wide. But the real differentiator was Bairstow’s hundred. Under pressure early in the morning session in the face of an examining spell from Shami, Bairstow found some motivation in the form of unprovoked needling from Kohli in the slips.
Bairstow responded in kind, whipping India’s bowling to all parts of the ground to score his third century in as many Tests this summer. In the course of that hundred, Bairstow also became the leading run-getter in Tests for the calendar year and only the second player, after Michael Clarke, to score five hundreds in a year batting at No 5 or below.
He reached his hundred in 119 balls—the fastest any player has scored a hundred against India in Tests since January 2016— after scoring only 16 off his first 64 balls.