Get your dose of analysis, stats and colour from the third Test on ESPNcricinfo’s live blog
Andrew Fidel Fernando25-Aug-2021The high-intensity series moves to Headingley in Leeds for the third Test. Virat Kohli’s India not only have a 1-0 lead after turning the tables at Lord’s, they also have a more stable XI to field. How do Joe Root and England bounce back with their batting woes and Mark Wood’s injury? Join us for updates, analysis and colour. All timestamps are local time. Click here for ball-by-ball commentary. Here’s our live coverage in Hindi. (Please refresh your page for the latest)England rock day oneAlmost as if to make up for their horror final day at Lord’s, England had the first day of their fantasies at Headingley. James Anderson cast a swing-bowling spell over the top order, reducing India to 21 for 3 in the 11th over, to immediately send the opposition into defense mode. Although Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane threatened, briefly, to rebuild, the supporting England seamers then came in and wiped out the last seven India wickets for 22 runs, to have them 78 all out – the third lowest total India have ever made after choosing to bat first.When England bowled, conditions seemed exceedingly seamer-friendly, the pitch and the atmosphere allowing the ball to move just enough and late enough to get new batters nicking, rather than missing. But then when India’s quicks had the ball, the surface appeared half-decent – even good – to bat on. Rohit – India’s top-scorer – batted out 105 balls for his 19; Haseeb Hameed needed only 43 deliveries to get to the same score. Hameed later progressed to a half-century off his 110th delivery, before finishing on 60 not out. Rory burns made an unbeaten 52. England finished the day with the match firmly in their grip. They had 10 first-innings wickets still in hand, and were 42 runs ahead.A rare century standWhat a time for England’s openers to put on a century stand – when they’ve got their opponents all out for 78. It’s only the second time in the last five years that England have been in triple figures for zero wickets.Ten minutes to go on day one. Will they last till stumps? A wicket here would be against the run of play.Dem scores levelThis kinda tells the story:Getty Images
India laboured their way to 78, stuttering at each step, hunkering down, deadbatting, playing within themselves, batting time. And still they were blown away, partly because of the quality of England’s bowling.Hameed and Burns, meanwhile, have largely batted normally, picking off the hittable balls (Burns just pummeled a six over deep square leg off Siraj), defending the good ones, running hard, and defusing what little swing/seam the India bowlers have gleaned. England will probably be looking for a lead in excess of 200 here.Fifty-run stand for BurnsHameedPA Photos/Getty Images
There were a couple of edges that fell short of slips. There was the occasional play and miss. One or two minor stutters between the wickets. But on a day on which their bowlers have dominated, these are all easily forgiven. They haven’t had quite the quality of bowling to deal with from India so far, but with the ball a little older now, and these two settled… who knows? England may be poised to overtake India’s total without losing a wicket.This is only England’s second fifty-plus opening stand in the past year, by the way.It’s a party at Headingley4:35pmThe crowd was in high spirits since the first few overs, when Anderson was scything through the top order, but they are in proper voice now. Helping their mood is this so-far uneventful Haseeb Hameed – Rory Burns stand. They’ve batted with more poise than India’s top order, perhaps because India’s quicks have not managed to gain as much movement – in the air or off the pitch – as Anderson and co. did with the new ball.AFP/Getty Images
Dreams on dreamsThat’s a fantasy session for England to back up a dream session in the morning. They got the last six wickets for 22 runs, then made 21 for no loss before tea. In the seven overs so far, India’s quicks did not bother England anywhere near as much as the hosts’ seamers had.While the players take a break, let’s check in with Sid Monga about what he thinks went wrong for India.Fernando: So… what happened?Monga: So what I think is, there have been two big differences from the last two Tests. The ball has seamed more here. And India will be disappointed with the shots KL Rahul and Cheteshwar Pujara played. The rest is what can happen when the ball is seaming just the right amountFernando: Yes, but as a fan of Lankan and Pakistani collapses, I thought India actually applied themselves to an annoying degree – Rohit batting out 100 balls for example. At least give us viewers some slapstick fun if you’re going to be 78 all out.Monga They tried with crazy running, did Pant, Jadeja and RohitFernando: It felt like a poor imitation. Still – can you be critical that so many batters fell playing balls they didn’t need to feel for? Or had they just been set up too well that you can’t really blame them?Monga: I am critical of Rahul and Pujara because they didn’t know by then the ball was seaming, and they also went chasing. With Kohli, though, the thing is when he scored all those runs, he was driving at that ball. Sometimes you middle it, sometimes you get beaten, sometimes you edge and get dropped. Today, he edged and it went to hand. You can’t be critical of Kohli there unless you say the gazillion runs he has scored have been a fluke. Same with Pant, mind you. He plays high-risk innings. He has had a decent amount of luck early in his career. It ran out todayFernando: With a tail this long, was a lower order collapse like that always likely to happen at some point?Monga: Well yeah, time to delete all those articles that worked really hard to manufacture the technical changes in the Indian tail or did mental gymnastics to suggest it was the Anderson drama that spurred them on. That innings was a freak occurrence. This is more the norm if you play these four at 8 to 11 in these conditionsWait, what just happened?India 78 all outGetty Images
India were struggling at lunch, but dayumm, what a collapse they’ve put on since. They lost their last six wickets for 20 runs, and England didn’t need James Anderson to take a single one of those – Craig Overton taking three, Sam Curran two, and Ollie Robinson the other (to add to his dismissal of Rahane just before lunch). If India felt they were coming into this Test with momentum, following Lord’s, that has been completely reversed now. 78 is a total unlikely to daunt even England’s batting order. Which is saying something.In terms of historically low scores, it’s not quite India’s worst after winning the toss and choosing to bat first, but it’s not far off. This 78 is beaten only by the 75 they slumped to against West Indies in 1987, and the 76 against South Africa in 2008.Thankfully for India, conditions are still very seamer friendly. But Virat Kohli had spoken at the toss of taking the game deep enough to bring Ravindra Jadeja’s spin into play. That seems very far away now.At least they’ve passed 36Four wickets fall for no runGetty Images
India are spiraling to a sub-100 score. Rohit and Ravindra Jadeja put on an exhibition of deadbatting – Rohit bringing up a century of deliveries faced. But eventually, he lost his patience. He saw a short ball from Overton and tried to pull it, but was waaaay too late on the shot, and ended up just lobbing it to a catching mid on.Next ball, Mohammad Shami, England’s tormentor at Lord’s, got a delivery outside off stump and duly gets squared up, sending the ball to third slip at belly height. Ishant Sharma just about manages to keep out the hat-trike ball, which was headed for middle stump.Next over, Jadeja didn’t quite manage, though. A Sam Curran yorker, which was also crashing into middle, hit him on the toe after he missed with his flick. He asked for a review, but once it was confirmed he did not get an inside edge to that one, he was on his way.Jasprit Bumrah lasted just one ball too. LBW to Curran, the ball straightening to beat his shot. It would have gone on to hit leg.India 67 for 9, having been 56 for 3 just before lunch. England’s ripping madly through the tail.Getty Images
Snatched himself a single-figure score? India slip sliding2pmAnother one’s gone! Rishabh Pant’s outside edge and the ball were flirting madly during their short stay, and they finally come together. Robinson pitches back of a length, the ball angling across the batter. Pant tries to punch it through cover point, but it’s a ball he really should have left alone.Buttler has his fifth catch, by the way, and could be on the way to a record. Wasim Bari, Ridley Jacobs, Ian Smith and Bob Taylor all have seven dismissals.While all this has been happening, Rohit has been playing a Murali Vijayesque opening innings. Strike rate down below 20.India retreat into their bunkerWhile we wait for session two to start, Shiva Jayaraman has done some digging through the stats.
If the scoreline of 56/4 leaves any doubt about how well the England bowlers, led by the redoubtable James Anderson, have bowled then look at the number of scoring shots India played in the first session of the Test. Their batters managed just 22 scoring shots in the first session, scoring 41 runs from them (the legbyes and no-balls conceded by England have padded the score up a bit). In the last-ten years in Test cricket, only six other sessions, where at least 25 overs were bowled in the first session of the first day of a Test (340 such sessions), have produced fewer scoring shots. In terms of the percentage of deliveries that were scored off by batters in this session (22 out of 155, 14.2%), it ranks a poor 13th from the bottom.
Robinson nicks Rahane off1pmIf it wasn’t already clear that this was England’s morning, Robinson underlines the point by getting Ajinkya Rahane with a length ball that was angled in, left the pitch, and took a feather edge through to Buttler, who took his fourth catch of the morning. Not a lot seemed to be happening since Anderson left the attack. Rahane seemed to be playing himself in. Rohit was batting like a monk. These two batters seemed intent on pulling India out of their hole.Getty Images
India go to lunch at 56 for 4. Will Anderson come in and blast out the lower middle order? Will Bumrah and Shami slap-bang their way to a 200-run partnership this time? We’ll be back after the break.How does Jimmy do it?A conversation with our correspondent George DobellFernando: So George, you’ve followed Anderson around the world for years. You’ve watched him at close quarters. You’ve interviewed him. You’ve smelt his pheromones. You can level with us. He’s made some sort of deal with the devil to be this good at 39, right? What was it? Did it involve a blood sacrifice?Dobell: That’s as good an explanation as any I’ve heard. Yes, he’s sacrificed the careers of a generation of England’s top-order batters for an extra few years at the top.Fernando: That would explain the screams from a certain Burnley basement. And maybe why Gary Ballance hasn’t been seen for a while.Dobell: But to give a fuller answer, he’s clearly been fortunate with his genetics. He is light. He is strong. Some of that is fortune, no doubt. But he is hungry, too. Relentlessly hungry. And that means he keeps learning. We saw, in the last game, England allowed the emotions of the moment to get the better of them. But here he was cold and clinical in the way he utilised the conditions. We saw the out-swinger he learned at Lancashire all those years ago; we saw the inswinger that took him years to master; and we saw the wobble seam, which is a new toy and renders batting against him a nightmare. You can’t leave him with any certainty, but get drawn into a stroke and you risk those edges. It’s masterful stuff. A delight to witness.Fernando: I saw someone tweet recently, that during England’s Euro 2020 semi-final, when the whole nation would have been around a TV, Anderson was seen out at a centre nets bowling.Dobell: HA! Well, that sounds typical. You know, you learn most about him from the moments when he’s struggled. When he insisted – insisted – he go on that tour of India in 2016(ish). He was nowhere near fully fit. And a player with any interest in protecting their personal stats might have thought of skipping that tour and waiting for the green fields of England before making a return. Such is Anderson’s love of the battle and such is his belief, that he kept posting videos of himself bowling in the nets on social media until the England management had to accept he was fit. So they called him up and he endured a pretty rubbish tour. The attitude, though, is telling.Fernando: Beyond the physical toll, how does he possibly maintain that kind of mental pressure and intensity after 15 years of it?Dobell: I think he loves it. And maybe being dropped from the white-ball teams has given him the time to decompress in between games. So he’s been able to refresh and regain fitness and go again. But most of all, I think he just knows he’ll never have a better job. And he’s right.Aging like the finest cheddar11:45The cliche about 39-year-old Anderson is that he’s getting better just at the age when most seamers decline (some pretty rapidly). What’s fascinating is figure out when the improvements have come. Anderson actually had a pretty modest record (awful by his standards) at Headingley, which is arguably the premier swing-bowling venue in England.Getty Images
Since 2016, though, the man averages a quite ridiculous 12.08 at the venue – a streak that now accounts for 38 wickets. It’s hard to even think of a spinner who had a late-career boom in an already booming career the way Anderson has.Here’s a tweet that drives home this nonsense.
His spell is finally over, btw. Eight overs. Five maidens. Six runs. Three wickets. Will India come out of their bunker now?Put this spell on Only Fans fast before the ban kicks inAnother glorious set-up, another superb away-swinger, another shot that an India batter didn’t have to play but was suckered into, and Kohli is gone. This spell has been almost gratuitous in its swing-bowling mastery. The ball to Kohli was just on a sixth-stump line, and angled in, and moving away off the seam. Kohli drove, edged, and gave Buttler another catch.
India have lost three. I need a lie down.It’s Kohli v Anderson timeJimmy gets another one. He tormented Pujara with inswingers the previous over, hitting the pads repeatedly, and now he’s slipped in the away-swinger, perfectly pitched, Pujara following it with his hands to give Jos Buttler another regulation edge.
In comes captain Kohli, who is short of runs on this tour. He’s had scores of 44 and 13 (in the WTC final v NZ), a duck at Trent Bridge, then 42 and 20 at Lord’s.In, in, holds its line… and outIt’s the maestro at work. There are bits of grey dusting the temples, but this is a strategy that has worked for Anderson for a decade and a half, and it nabs him an early wicket here as well, to huuuuge cheers from the Headingley crowd. He bowled three slightly short of a length balls that shaped into KL Rahul, then slipped one fuller, that moved just a touch away and took Rahul’s edge, as the batter attempted to drive.Getty Images
No huge celebrations from Anderson. Just another new ball morning.Do England have an edge at Headingley?11 amBecause this is a venue where it swings, and because Ben Stokes played an innings that has been seared indelibly into cricket’s consciousness, it’s tempting to think of Headingey as a ground on which the hosts have an edge. That’s not really true, though. England have lost three Tests to the four they’ve won there since 2010.Getty Images
Associated Press
Anyway, the teams are out there. Rohit is facing up to Anderson.India unchanged. Overton and Malan come in for England
England: 1 Rory Burns, 2 Haseeb Hameed, 3 Dawid Malan, 4 Joe Root (capt), 5 Jonny Bairstow, 6 Jos Buttler (wk), 7 Moeen Ali, 8 Sam Curran, 9 Ollie Robinson, 10 Craig Overton, 11 James AndersonBumrah on the Lord’s brouhaha10:35AMIndia have won the toss and chose to bat first (more on that soon), but while those details come through, Bumrah has spoken to Sky about the exchanges at Headingley. Here’s what he had to say.
I really don’t want to go into the details, but when we play sport it is never really intentional that we want to really hurt the batsman or trying to aim to hit the batsman. That was our tactic to get the batsman our or get the lower order out because when we usually go to Australia or South Africa this is what happens.
But as soon as the day (Day 3) got over we were going back some of the words were exchanged. And we were really not happy. The exchanges were really not pleasant. I did not hear at that time because I was really tired after a long day, so couldn’t really hear what was going on, but all my teammates heard. Usually I’m a person who doesn’t go looking for a fight. But when I heard what was said I got riled up.
Then I said if something has come up I wouldn’t really back down and stay down. If something comes up I will give 10 times back. So everybody was really charged up and was really looking for a fight, if now something happens we won’t back down and we’ll go really hard. But not to lose shape because we are here to do a job. We don’t really want to talk and not make an impact.
So we were really using that fire to our advantage and then wanted make a result out of it. That eventually happened. We were really motivated and determined, everybody was together, we were really in everybody else’s faces, really going hard. I think that really worked in our favour. If at all anything (like that) comes in the future that will obviously be used in the same manner. And that fire will be used in the same direction.
How much fire will we get at Headingley?10:25AMWaddup? Welcome to the Live Report for Test #3 folks. One of the big questions leading in to the Test is whether England can bounce back after being decked so dramatically on day five at Lords. They went into that final day thinking they had a good chance of winning the Test. Then Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammad Shami – who were on the end of some hostile bowling early in the day – put on a rapid partnership to knock the wind out of England’s chest. Then they bowled the hosts out.The last three days of that Test saw words being exchanged between various England and India players. At the end of day three, James Anderson was involved in tense discussions with Bumrah in particular, as they went off the ground. Over the last few days, Anderson has conceded that perhaps the rancour from day three had influenced some poor decision-making from England on day five – when they tried to unsettle Bumrah with bouncers, rather than get him out.
“When Joe [Root] touched on getting a few things wrong I think potentially the minute Bumrah came in he brought Mark Wood on and took me off. I think that’s the sort of thing he was talking about as in letting the emotion get the better of us.
“That was the sort of, ‘right, it’s time for him have a taste of his own medicine’ type of thing rather than trying to get him out. You could keep me on and just me trying to just get him out normally and see if he plays any big shots whereas he went with Mark Wood straightaway.
“They are a passionate side, they use emotion differently to how we use it. They channel it well. We saw it on the last day. So that’s something we’ve got to think about going into the last three games.”
Is there more tension in store for us at Headingley? What’s a Big Three series these days without big-ego histrionics?We’ll have the toss for you shortly, anyway.