Woakes, Robinson and Anderson to come.
Woakes can bat, but equally hasn’t played for a year so unfair to ask too much. It comes down to the two in the middle now - Pope is looking good but Ali isn’t in yet. Doubt we’ll get another 100 - 70 or 80 maybe.
Am a bit of a fan of Moeen and he’s looking good.
Looks like a Yadav yorker in over 61 he jammed down on may have hit the toe rather than toe of bat which would have made for a tight lbw, but then unleashes a glorious cover drive.
ENG take lead, very disappointing if they don’t another 50. I reckon 100 is realistic, they will get 60-70 before the new ball is due.
99 lead in the end, thanks to a 50 from Woakes that pretty much cancels out the 50 by Thakur.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have them 5 down by the time they overtake our score? I’d take getting rid of Kohli before they do, absolutely.
Why do the announcers keep saying the 3rd day is best for batting at the Oval? Is that simply based on historical tests at the venue? Wouldn’t the normal weather conditions, ball age, etc. be the determining factors?
ETA: I believe I heard the Sky announcers mention this on Day 1, and not based on what already happened on Day 2.
During the lunch breaks of the England-India test matches, the US broadcaster, Willow, has been airing this fascinating documentary called “You Guys Are History”. It looks at the history of black players playing for England and the challenges that they faced. It was really eye-opening to me, as some of the racism and discrimination they experienced was not that long ago.
When I started following sports as a young child in the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s, black players were so ingrained into American sports that we didn’t even think race of race with respect to the sports we loved. Sure, we were taught in school about the the racism that black athletes faced throughout history, but that was in the past. And sure, the occasional tv or radio broadcaster would say something stupid or ignorant, but nothing close to the widespread nature of what was going on with black English cricketers. By the way, as I got older, it was clear that there were many forms of more subtle racism that black American athletes had to deal with, and still do, so by no means am I saying that we’ve achieved full equality. Anyway, felt I should point out this documentary for those of you that might be interested.
Cricket in England has been a reservoir of hostility to non-white people until fairly recently (and based on what is going on at YCCC, right until now).
English players of South African and Caribbean descent have been treated as “not English” no matter how many generations they have been in the UK.
I know classmates of mine from Pakistan in the late 1970s and early 1980s (age 11 to 16 at the time) were shocked when they emigrated to the UK to find that they couldn’t play any organized cricket.
They expected to encounter racist football hooligans (and oh boy, did they!) but the cricket thing was a bit of a shock.
Sky Sports just put up the stat that in the past 5 years the slips catching “efficiency” for England is 64%, the second lowest of the Test playing nations. Bottom is Bangladesh.
Most efficient are New Zealand (91%) and Australia (89%).
There’s more to this than just “the Poms couldn’t catch a cold”.
It’s always been an Australian cricketing meme that the England slips are out of alignment. They are either too close together or too far apart or both around the cordon and the relative positioning, particularly of 2nd and 3rd slip seems to our eyes wrong.
A further, and to my mind particularly in this series, the English pitches typically aren’t showing good carry and so by necessity the slips have had to be brought up.
It’s much easier taking a regulation edge off a 140k delivery if you are standing 25m back and it’s coming through waist height than the same regulation edge off a 130k shooter when you are 15m back.
India doing what they need to do, at 163/1 this afternoon. I know they have been fragile, but I do wonder at what they might think about declaring. There’s 2 days after this one, and at lunch tomorrow at 100 runs a session they would be 300 ahead, and I don’t think they would dangle that carrot on a pitch they’d just got 400 on.
As is so often the case, India’s best chance of winning comes in being bowled out.
Imagine how good they’d be if they were well lead?
Though a skip with Kholi as VC or just one of the grunts would have a guy inside the tent pissing inside the tent.
It’s 212-1 and I still think it’s too early to be thinking about declarations. 300-3 at the end of the day and sure, you start thinking about accelerating to set an unattainable target.
I would think they’s want at least 450 before thinking of declaring. Not sure how the weather looks next 2 days.
Two wickets in the first over of the new ball; two new batters facing. Bit of a momentum shift.
Totally. If they get Kohli quickly, England very much back on top
Bad light puts paid to that for now, but it does mean Kohli and Jadeja have to start again against a nearly new ball and fresher bowlers tomorrow.
On the declaration front, it occurs that England aren’t so much more rock solid batting for a time than they are chasing a score. They’re usually more comfortable with the latter than the former, in fact. Setting a big score and asking “Can you stay in?” might be a bigger challenge than a gettable score and asking “Do you fancy it?”
Well two more down within the first hour, neither of them Kohli, though.
Oh wait, second one reversed on review.
Gone five minutes later anyway. Pretty evenly balanced at this stage.
Going to be difficult to see India with less than 250 lead (currently 206).
The pitch has few demons but can ENG chase 250?
Love to see them do it without a big contribution from Root.
Kohli gone!
To a classical off tweakers dismissal.
Kohli does a bit of minor dressing room redecorating. 
So what’s a par score for England’s chase? 275? I assume they’ll have at least 100 overs to bat.