India reduced England to 77/3 after posting a mammoth 587 in their first innings.
Riding on skipper Shubman Gill’s marathon 269-run knock, India racked up a mammoth 587/10 on the board. The hosts were 77/3 at the close of play on Day 2, trailing the visitors by 510 runs in the first innings.
In his column for Daily Mail, Hussain wrote that if India lose from this position, the players will be under immense pressure for their next match at Lord’s.
According to Hussain, the tourists will need to work the pitch in their favour if they are to emerge victorious.
Notably, the Gill-led side lost the series opener at Headingley by five wickets despite setting a massive 371-run target.
“India want to extract some spin deeper into the contest and I think the game needs the ball to spin too, because Test match pitches either need to give the bowlers something to work with at the start of an innings or deteriorate later on. It is not acceptable to play on a road for five days, and India will want to capitalise on their good start in the absence of their attack spearhead Jasprit Bumrah.
“If you think about it, India have had seven pretty good days of Test match cricket this series, yet they’re 1-0 down, and so these next three days are pretty important to them. If the pitch defeats them here, they’ll find it incredible that they go to Lord’s behind in the series," Hussain stated.
Speaking on the bowling conditions and the match, Hussain remarked: “So far, it’s been classic Test match cricket on an incredibly flat pitch, although England clearly expected more movement, because aside from an hour on Thursday, during Chris Woakes’s first spell, the ball did nothing. The statistics told you it swung less, it seamed less, bounced less, and the surface was slower than its Headingley equivalent.
“It shows that England read the conditions slightly wrong in bowling first, yet you have to accept that chasing here at Edgbaston has been the way to go – remember they knocked off 378 just three wickets down when India were last here three years ago," he added.
Akash Deep, who replaced Jasprit Bumrah in the Indian XI at Edgbaston, dismissed Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope for ducks while Mohammed Siraj got rid of Zak Crawley on 19.
Joe Root (18*) and Harry Brook (30*) were the two unbeaten batters at stumps for England.