VISAKHAPATNAM: Ludicrous though it may sound, the chase is on. No team has ever hunted down a target of 399 to win a Test match in India, but no team has ever come out to play with quite such indefatigable optimism as this England team.
By the close of another enthralling day in Visakhapatnam, England’s top order had already chewed 67 runs out of their requirement in 14 overs, for the loss of Ben Duckett, but with Rehan Ahmed’s promotion in the fabled “night-hawk” role reaffirming their determination to chase every scoring option going, and revive India’s recent memories of Edgbaston 2022, when this same side hurtled to a target of 378 with barely a break of sweat.
That they were chasing so many was thanks almost entirely to Shubman Gill, whose third Test century, a gutsy 104 from 147 balls, was his first score of note in 13 increasingly under-pressure innings.
Gill came through an extraordinary ordeal in the first half-hour of the day to underpin a second-innings total of 255 that, in any ordinary Test scenario, would be plenty given the lead India took into it. But in the wake of the Hyderabad miracle, and into the teeth of another hard-hitting half-century stand from England’s openers, nothing quite seems as safe for India as it ought to. Notwithstanding the strong likelihood that the magnificent Jasprit Bumrah has another huge contribution to come, Gill’s close-of-play suggestion that India were “70-30” favourites rather underlined their misgivings.
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That curious unease was present in every facet of India’s play, up to and including the cathartic roar that greeted R Ashwin’s dismissal of Duckett for 28 in his first over of the innings. But with Zak Crawley thumping his drives with front-foot dominance to reach 29 not out from 50 balls at the close, England closed the day as they had begun it – self-evidently up against it, but swinging their haymakers with ferocious conviction.
India had an overnight lead of 171 with ten wickets standing when their second innings resumed on a hazy morning, and the conditions could not have been more perfect for James Anderson to bring his peerless new-ball attributes to bear. Fresher than he might have been after just 56 overs of rest between innings, Anderson tore out both of India’s openers in the space of nine deliveries; Rohit Sharma, who played for the nipbacker and lost his off stump to an imperceptible hint of away movement, and Yashasvi Jaiswal, the first-innings hero, who chased an outswinger across his bows and snicked a low edge to Joe Root at first slip, for a combined addition of two runs.
England’s day could scarcely have started better, yet it could and probably should have continued in an even more remarkable vein. For the first 17 runs of his innings, Gill was a catatonic bag of nerves – his footwork so frozen that even his first scoring shot, a freebie pull through a Tom Hartley long-hop, appeared to have been executed against his better survival instincts.
One delivery later, even Gill himself thought he was stone-dead as Hartley thumped his planted front pad and extracted the on-field lbw verdict, but after consulting with Shreyas Iyer and deciding to roll the dice, his speculative review showed the slenderest of inside-edges. There would have been no such get-out had Marais Erasmus raised his finger six balls later, however. With the ball still on a string, Anderson jagged another nipbacker into that front pad, but this time Gill was saved by the on-field decision.
Gill began to creep out of his shell once Anderson’s spell was done, and a languid launch for six off Shoaib Bashir seemed to suggest he was finding his feet. But there was another near-miss to come, as he snicked a palpable edge off Hartley, but Root was too wide at a lone slip to lay a hand on it.
By degrees, however, the panic dissipated and the good vibes seeped back into India’s innings. With a diet of singles against the spinners, Gill and Iyer began to inflate that lead, on a surface that was notably more benign than it had been at a similar juncture of the second day’s play. The fifty stand had come up by the time Rehan entered the attack in the 23rd over with a licence to rip his legbreaks, but two drag-downs in his first over allowed Gill to rush towards his first half-century in 13 innings, which he duly reached with another pair of boundaries in Rehan’s third over of the day.
