Bumrah’s best establishes India’s dominance on Day 2

A sensational Jasprit Bumrah produced a masterclass with the old ball to pick up his best Test figures in India and bowl England out for 253, giving India the upper-hand at the end of the second day at Vizag.

Bumrah’s 6/45 all came with the ball starting to reverse swing. He turned the game around since then to keep England from pushing ahead. The visitors had started well with opener Zak Crawley’s quickfire 76, which included four fours in an over off Bumrah with the new ball.

After a 59-run opening stand, Kuldeep Yadav had Ben Duckett caught at silly point with some extra bounce coming into play. But Crawley, bringing his long reach into play, resorted to counterattacking. He slog-swept a six and then drove confidently down the track as well to put Ashwin off and brought up a well-deserved fifty in quick time.

Just as he was threatening to make it a lot worse for India, a bowling change worked wonders with Axar Patel striking almost immediately, getting the aggressive Crawley to miscue a big hit. Shreyas Iyer, running behind, took a good catch on the offside.

After that it was all Bumrah, as the ball began to move around a touch. He first worked over Joe Root and had him nicking to first slip. That sequence of balls was bettered soon after as he thundered a 141.7 kph yorker past a well-set Ollie Pope to splatter the stumps. It was the third wicket lost for 22 runs for England before Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes saw off the period of play before Tea.

But just as another stand was budding, Bumrah came back after the break to have Bairstow caught well at slip by Shubman Gill. In this period, he had some help from the other end with Kuldeep Yadav spinning one past Ben Foakes’ defence and having Rehan Ahmed caught at midwicket, with Gill pouching another sharp chance.

At 182/7, England were looking down and out before Stokes combined with Tom Hartley to counterattack the spinners. The duo added 47 in quick time forcing Rohit Sharma to turn towards Bumrah again.

The pacer delivered once again leaving Stokes bemused with one skidding through before Harltey went swinging and edging to give Gill his fourth catch of the innings. He wrapped it up by trapping James Anderson LBW to finish with figures of 6/45, to cap off an innings where he became the fastest Indian bowler to 150 Test wickets. Rohit and Jaiswal saw off the small period before Stumps unscathed.

That Bumrah spell offset some of India’s mistakes with the bat in the first innings that had seen them being bowled out below 400. At the start of the day, Yashasvi Jaiswal scored more than half of India’s first innings but England managed to chip away at the other end to bowl them out for just 396.

Jaiswal got his maiden Test double century in the first session even as James Anderson produced a masterful spell with the second new ball. Jaiswal’s overnight partner R Ashwin, got a couple of boundaries early in the day but fell to a jaffa from Anderson, nicking behind.

Jaiswal began to chance his arms against the spinners but England managed to keep a lid on the scoring rate at that point. Anderson got prodigious seam movement to keep one end tight and played on Jaiswal’s patience. As the runs came to a trickle, Jaiswal tried to take on Anderson but holed out to the deep in the process after a mammoth 209.

India’s tail did not last too long with Rehan Ahmed and Shoaib Bashir managing to strike in quick succession to bowl India out before Bumrah stamped his authority.

Brief Scores:
India 396 (Yashasvi Jaiswal 209; James Anderson 3-47, Rehan Ahmed 3-65) and  28/0 lead England 253 (Zak Crawley 76, Ben Stokes 47; Jasprit Bumrah 6-45, Kuldeep Yadav 3-71) by 171 runs