England and India started their 5th and final Dharamsala Test on 7th March. England have won the toss and elected to field first. They got a good start despite Jasprit Bumrah’s immaculate spell of bowling. Both the openers survived his probing balls in the first hour. Later, they started to take on spinners, trying to unsettle them right away.
Ben Duckett(27) fell first after putting up 64 runs partnership with Zak Crawley. Ollie Pope(11) did not look settled with Kuldeep Yadav spinning the ball away from him. Trying to force him out of the attack, got stumped out. Interestingly, young wicket-keeper Dhruv Jurel told Kuldeep before the ball that Pope is looking to step out. He reminded MS Dhoni with his suggestion.
Joe Root(26) continued to bat in his normal fashion rather than trying to be over aggressive. But magical delivery from Kuldeep Yadav ended Zak Crawley’s innings on his score 79. England middle-order who aren’t been in good form, immediately looked under huge pressure. Kuldeep got ultra aggressive Jonny Bairstow(29), Ravindra Jadeja got Root and Kuldeep got Ben Stokes(0) in consecutive overs.
Ben Foakes(24) tried to form strike with tail-enders but Ravichandran Ashwin playing his 100th Test came into action. He dismissed Tom Hartley(6), Mark Wood(0) in the same over at England’s score on 183. Again, he repeated the same feat by dismissing Foakes and James Anderson in the same over ending England’s innings on 218 from 57.4 overs.
England batters would curse themselves for this performance as they did not look settled against spin of Kuldeep Yadav. The left-arm chinaman spinner took 5 wickets in quick time, aided by over aggressive approach of English men. He became the fatest Indian bowler to reach 50 wickets in the terms of balls bowled to reach the milestone, 1871 balls, beating Axar Patel’s 2205 balls.