After the first day of the second Test between England and India at the Lord’s ground got washed off, both teams must have gone into strategy making with respect to team selection keeping in mind the overcast conditions and the covered pitch.
Day two at Lord’s also started off with rain, but finally, the skies cleared up a bit to let the toss happen. It was won by Joe Root and he chose to field first. England brought in Pope for his debut and Woakes in place of Stokes. India surprisingly dropped Umesh Yadav for Kuldeep Yadav and Dhawan made way for Pujara. Kohli had also mentioned that he would have bowled first if he had won the toss.
India must have hoped grittiness from their openers Vijay and Rahul, but instead, saw James Anderson send both with 10 runs on the board in the 6.3 overs that were possible before rains came down. Vijay got a peach of a delivery and Rahul was foxed into edging it to the keeper.
Cheteshwar Pujara was unfortunately run out when he was sold a dummy by captain Virat Kohli and India slumped to 15/3 after 8.3 overs, when rains interrupted again. Play however started and Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane survived a tough phase to add 34 runs for the 4th wicket.
However, Woakes removed Virat Kohli with a beauty for 24 runs and then removed Hardik Pandya, who scored 11 runs in 10 balls. Curran continued his good work by castling Dinesh Karthik with a beauty that swung in the air and moved towards the stumps after pitching. Karthik played down the wrong line and was bowled for 1.
R Ashwin top-scored for India with 29 runs and Virat Kohli scored the second best of 24.
Anderson came back to complete his five-wicket haul picking up wickets of Rahane, Kuldeep, and Ishant. This also gave him 99 wickets in Tests at Lord's.
BRIEF SCORE: INDIA 107 (R ASHWIN 29; J ANDERSON 5/20)
Twitteratis were not amused to see the way Indian batting performed and with the team barely clawing their way to 107 runs. They were all over the social media site and we have some tweets for you.
Here are some of the tweets:
Lovely Toss to have Won ... Backed up by some tremendous swing bowling ... & some in different Batting ... #ENGvIND
— Michael Vaughan (@MichaelVaughan) August 10, 2018
Was painful. And it is over.
— Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) August 10, 2018
Defensive batting & slip catching are two skills that are hardly needed in T20 & 50 overs cricket. Those are the two skills that have really deteriorated today. We are all products of our environment as they say.
— Sanjay Manjrekar (@sanjaymanjrekar) August 10, 2018
When Sam Curran is bowling in swing to the right hand batsmen his arm is coming slightly away from his ears/head.When he tries to bowl away going delivery; his bowling arm is much closer to ears/head! #perfect #ENGvsIND
— Irfan Pathan (@IrfanPathan) August 10, 2018
England played four seamers. India played two spinners. Both teams wanted to field first.... #EngvInd
— Aakash Chopra (@cricketaakash) August 10, 2018
Superb bowling by Jimmy Anderson. Difficult conditions for batting too, but India's capitulation betrays lack of technique as well as heart
— Cricketwallah (@cricketwallah) August 10, 2018
What a massive advantage winning this toss has been for England. But wasn’t meant to unfold like this for India.. Come on team, some fight somewhere !!
— Jatin Sapru (@jatinsapru) August 10, 2018
