INDIA TOUR OF ENGLAND, 2025
Joe Root acknowledges the crowd after reaching 50 © Getty
England’s decision to bat first in the third Test against India at Lord’s proved to be a testing affair for the batters. The decision to bat was uncommon for England at home in recent times, but on a green top that had received a bit of trimming on the first morning, England had shown an intention to change up their plans from the previous two Tests of the series. But conditions were far from ideal for the quick-scoring template that has come to be associated with them, and instead required an old-fashioned grind.
Joe Root and Ollie Pope fought their way through the tough phase to remain unbeaten over one and a half sessions. They stitched together a useful partnership worth 109 in 210 balls, which helped England recover after losing a couple of early wickets.
In addition to a wicketless session, another blow for India was Rishabh Pant walking off the field. Pant suffered a blow to his finger while diving down the legside to collect a Jasprit Bumrah delivery. Dhruv Jurel came on to keep wickets for the hosts. Nevertheless, India’s attack had done well early in the day to mount pressure on the hosts.
With the pace attack bolstered by the return of Jasprit Bumrah, in place of Prasidh Krishna, the openers were tested in a variety of ways. There was some movement on offer for both Bumrah and his new-ball partner Akash Deep. But alongside, there was also some uneven bounce that at times came to their rescue. Genuine edges fell short of the wicket-keeper or the slip cordon right through the first hour. Consequently, the plays and misses too increased with the ball showing enough deviation off the surface.
The false shot percentage in the first 15 overs was 38.4% – the highest for the first 15 overs of any Test innings in England since 2006. England’s pace in scoring was down as a result, with boundaries not coming by as frequently as they have normalised in the Bazball era. While both Akash and Bumrah were unlucky not to have a wicket against their name, Nitish Reddy found himself at the other end of that spectrum. In his first over he had Ben Duckett loving a pull down the legside. A couple of balls later, he produced a peach of an away-seamer to get Zak Crawley nicking behind. In between, Reddy could have had another if Shubman Gill had latched onto a tough low chance at gully.
But Pope rode his luck alongside a busy Root to weather that storm with a fighting partnership. Scoring had been reduced to a snail’s pace and they went through a phase where there were no runs score for over four overs consecutively. The run-rate of 2.91 was also England’s second-slowest at home in the Bazball era over a full season. Nevertheless, Root went on to register his 103rd score of fifty or more with Pope also nearing the milestone by the stroke of Tea.
Brief Scores: England 153/2 (Joe Root 54*, Ollie Pope 44*; Nitish Reddy 2-35) vs India
© Cricbuzz
