All the six sessions of this third Test match belong to England, as for the first time they are in a commanding position and have caused pose problems for Team India. Captain Alastair Cook played a captain’s knock and scored 95 runs when many fans felt he missed a well deserved century.

However, Gary Ballance and Ian Bell went on to score in three-figures. Ballance was out on 156 runs, while Bell scored an attacking 167 runs. Even the debutant Jos Buttler scored 85 runs towards the end of the innings. So, there were two instances of players scoring 150+ runs and two missing century chances.

By the end of the second day’s play, England had declared at 569 runs for the loss of seven wickets. In reply, India had scored 25 runs after losing Shikhar Dhawan once again early in the innings. Runs just were too hard to come by for Cook and he was facing a run draught.

There were four top scorers for England around whom the first innings revolved. Two of them went past 150 runs and the other two certainly deserved to reach their individual centuries too. The batting of Gary Balance and Ian Bell took the match away from India in patch, which was started by Cook in the first session.

Jos Buttler added fire to the batting towards the end as he scored more than a run a ball. The entire English team was really waiting for him to score a century on debut. However, when he was dismissed on 85 runs, England declared with 14 overs of play still remaining.

All knew it wouldn’t be easy for India to negotiate that one hour of play. And especially Shikhar Dhawan not having runs under his belt, that was all going to be difficult. One wicket was enough to put England in the driver’s seat and they got that wicket making life more difficult for India.

At the end of the day, India had scored 25 runs for the loss of one wicket. They are still 544 runs shy of the England score. However, the first priority for India will be to score 369 runs to avoid follow on.

Article Posted By : abhi_bangal  On July 29, 2014lView All Articles

Article Source :

http://www.veethi.com/articles/england-in-command-of-the-third-test-match-article-3202.htm

Keywords :
India England third Test , Gary Ballance century , Ian Bell century