England 191 for 6 (Stokes 55*, Rashid 1*) trail India 455 (Kohli 167, Pujara 119, Ashwin 58, Moeen 3-98) by 264 runs
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01:48
Ganguly: Stokes looked confident in defence
Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes went a significant way towards repairing the damage done to England’s first innings at Visakhapatnam, extending their sixth-wicket stand to 110 before Umesh Yadav made the breakthrough ten minutes before lunch to pluck out Bairstow’s leg stump for a hard-earned 53.
By lunch, Stokes was still in situ, on 55 not out, having helped to haul England from a perilous overnight scoreline of 106 for 5 to a still-uncomfortable but vastly more assured 191 for 6. But, with Yadav finding some signs of reverse swing on an increasingly slow and low surface, there was further evidence that this wicket won’t get any better for batting.
If there had been an assumption before the start of play that England would continue to stumble against India’s spin-led attack, then Bairstow’s alarming arrival on the field of play merely sharpened those thoughts. Jogging out to the middle to resume his innings, Bairstow lost his footing on the turf and had to hobble back to the dressing-room for treatment after rolling his ankle.
He showed no ill-effects however, turning quickly for two runs in Umesh’s first over of the day to open his account for the day, and from that moment on, England’s sixth-wicket pairing continued in the same prolific vein that they have displayed all year. Between them, they have now made 772 runs in seven stands in 2016, the most by any batting pair.
India stuck doggedly to their guns throughout a fallow first hour – arguably too doggedly, with R Ashwin bowling unchanged in a nine-over spell that yielded an early wasted review for lbw when Bairstow gloved an attempted sweep, and one half-chance for a stumping off Stokes. However, there was little of the threat and penetration that he had displayed on the second evening.
That, in part, was down to the quality of England’s batting. Bairstow, as has often been the case in this partnership, was the more fluent of the pair, adept at working the singles and rotating the strike, while Stokes concentrated mainly on the quality of his defence, particularly against the spinners – an aspect of his game that is unrecognisable from his previous tours in Asian conditions.
That said, Stokes’ innings was interspersed, inevitably, with ferocious intent whenever the ball was in his slot. He added seven more fours in bringing up his fifty from 108 balls, three of them nailed through the covers as Ashwin and Jayant Yadav dropped short.
Bairstow followed suit to his half-century two overs later, from 137 balls, with a controlled steer through third man off Ravi Jadeja. He survived one half-chance when Virat Kohli at short midwicket was unable to scoop up an airy flick off Jayant, and he seemed to be steering a calm path to the lunch break when, with the new ball looming too, he was bowled by a beauty from Umesh, a fast inswinging yorker that crashed into his stumps via the base of his pad.
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo