Yashasvi Jaiswal fell short of three figures but India kept up the good work to go to Tea at 182/3 in an attritional afternoon session on the opening day of the second Test in Birmingham. The flamboyant Indian opener, alongside skipper Shubman Gill (42*), measured up to the expectations once again to nudge the visitors into the ascendancy through the first half but Ben Stokes returned to clip off the 66-run partnership against the run of play, in what was the lone moment of joy for the hosts in the second session.
Gill and Jaiswal fared well against the England attack for the first hour. The bowlers were keeping it tight, operating with a spread-out field to stem the flow of boundaries that the latter half of the morning session witnessed. The hosts reintroduced Woakes and Carse in tandem once again after Lunch, and even though the scoring rate was far from frenetic, the conditions had eased out for batting. While Gill remained vigilant at the start, Jaiswal was quite set by this point to let any freebies slide.
Yet to taste any fruit after more than an hour of toil, Stokes brought himself back into the attack and provided England the breakthrough they were yearning for. Staying true to his swashbuckling instincts, Jaiswal slashed at a short and wide delivery and ended up bottom-edging it to the wicketkeeper to miss out by 13 runs on what would have been a well-compiled hundred.
Rishabh Pant, rather unsurprisingly, launched Shoaib Bashir for a six over long-on moments before Tea, but otherwise took a cautious approach during his brief stay worth 14* till the break.
Earlier, Chris Woakes was unlucky to end up with just one wicket despite a probing spell to start things off, whereas Jaiswal and Karun Nair brought India back on track after the setback with an assured stand of 80 thereafter. However, Brydon Carse yanked England back into the game at the stroke of Lunch with the wicket of the resurgent Nair.
In overcast conditions, an unchanged England sent India in. The visitors rang the changes on the flipside, drafting in both all-rounders Nitish Reddy and Washington Sundar to add batting depth, in place of Sai Sudharsan and Shardul Thakur, while Akash Deep replaced spearhead Jasprit Bumrah, who was afforded rest notwithstanding a week-long gap since the series opener in Leeds.
England’s new-ball merchants, Woakes in particular, got the ball to hoop around and there was some steep bounce on offer early in the session but the hosts could only muster up a single strike. Sandwiched between two close lbw calls was Woakes’ reward for disciplined bowling. KL Rahul, iffy since the start of the innings, dragged one back onto his stumps.
Once Woakes was out of the attack, India’s second-wicket pair breathed a little easy. Nair latched onto a few half-volleys by Josh Tongue while Jaiswal grew in confidence in the second hour and heaped the misery on Tongue courtesy an array of drives.
England uncorked the short-ball ploy soon enough, and Jaiswal took on Tongue with horizontal bat shots on the leg side to fetch three consecutive boundaries in an over, completing his 11th Test half-century with the middle one. Six minutes before Lunch, Carse got one to jump at Nair and as he put his bat up to fend it, he spliced it to second slip where Harry Brook made no mistake.
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