Poor light made sure India survive in the dying stages of day 4 at Lord’s even as they faced a middle-order collapse against England during the second Test. India, who were going brilliantly at 155/3, suddenly lost a flurry of wickets which saw them lose three wickets in 20 runs. First Mark Wood removed Cheteshwar Pujara with a Jaffer, then Moeen Ali removed a dangerous looking Ajinkya Rahane and Ravindra Jadeja to make quick work of the visitors.
All of this, after Pujara and Rahane had combined for 100 runs to bail the visitors out. While Pujara missed his half century by a whisker (45 off 206), Rahane found form ( 61 off 146) and started playing his shots after getting his eye in. Only disappointment was Ravindra Jadeja who was out cheaply and had no answer to where his off stump was.
Later as wickets continued to tumble, skipper Virat Kohli made gestures from the Lord’s pavilion to his batsmen as the light was fading and poor visibility would have caused more dismissals. Even Rohit Sharma had to barge out and reiterate what Kohli was saying. In the end, some common sense prevailed and Umpires called off the day’s play almost eight over earlier.
Earlier searching desperately for runs, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane put up a dogged resistance against a probing England attack to take India to 105 for three at tea on day four of the second Test. The two senior batsmen, who have been out form for a while alongside skipper Virat Kohli, shared a valuable stand for the fourth wicket to steady the Indian innings after the visitors lost their top three for 56 runs by lunch. India led by 78 runs at the break.
Both Pujara (29 off 148) and Rahane (24 off 74) batted for survival for a major part of the second session before finding some welcome runs. Only 49 runs came in the 28 overs bowled in the session but, most importantly, for India, they did not lose a wicket. Rahane hit a couple of boundaries which included a pull shot off Ollie Robinson while there was a loud cheer from the crowd when Pujara played his 100th ball with only 12 runs to his name.
The cheer got louder when he got his first boundary, a flick off Mark Wood, off his 118th delivery. Like he had done successfully with Rohit Sharma in the opening session, Wood tried to bounce out Pujara with a barrage of short balls, but the Saurashtra strongman was up for the challenge.
Spinner Moeen Ali had a lot of bowling to do in the session with the odd ball turning in sharply or keeping low on a deteriorating pitch. In the morning session, India felt the heat on a sunny Lord’s morning as Wood removed their in-form openers before Kohli was caught behind to leave the visitors gasping at 56 for three at lunch. The Indian openers K L Rahul and Rohit Sharma, who made up for the middle-order’s prolonged failure so far in the series, could not bat long on this occasion.
(With agencies)
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