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When play resumed on Day 4, India needed nine wickets and England 332 runs to win the Visakhapatnam Test. By the time the first session ended, there was only one clear favourite. India, who now stand four strikes away from a series-levelling win. Not to say that England don’t stand a chance, but with 205 more to get on a pitch playing tricks and two new batters in Ben Stokes and Ben Foakes, it will take a miracle.
England did not just hang around. They did execute their Bazball approach, and while it seemed to have paid off as they scored their runs at a rate of over 4.5, India found a way to break through – five times in the session to peg back the visitors at 194/6 at the lunch interval. Axar Patel gave India their first wicket of the day before Ravichandran Ashwin picked two more to move to 499, and Jasprit Bumrah-Kuldeep Yadav capped off the perfect session for India with back-to-back wickets on the stroke on the break.
With Kuldeep dismissing the set Zak Crawley for 72, India had one foot inside the door, but when Bumrah trapped Johnny Bairstow the next over, they had broken through it. So much so that even Rahul Dravid, who usually keeps a poker face, could not hold his emotions back and lent out a roar.
Watch the video below:
How the opening session panned out
England resumed with Rehan Ahmed continuing his attack. He took his chances and even succeeded before Axar Patel had him on the backfoot. Ollie Pope got off to a start himself, but Rohit Sharma’s sharp reflex of a catch at first slip did not make India rue the absence of Shubman Gill due to injury. England went about playing their strokes but on a Day 4 pitch, it requires a lot of courage and execution. While there was no shortage of the former, the latter is where England slipped up. Ashwin got the dangerous Joe Root playing one shot too many before the Kuldeep-Bumrah show took over.
The game is heading towards another Day 4 finish. Ashwin is in red-hot form and Bumrah is just beginning to do BOOM things. India clearly ahead, but England still have Stokes as their last hope.
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