England team made a mess of their hard work with the ball in the India first innings, as they had bowled out the hosts for 145 and kept the lead to 33 runs.
India had started day two on 99/3 but quickly went down the England route. Rohit Sharma fell for 66 to Leach and then Joe Root did a miracle, picking his first five-wicket haul in Tests. He picked 5/8, while Leach finished on 4/54, as India folded for 145.
Though the pitch was turning square, it was expected that England might dig deep and give India atleast a 150-run target.
However, it all went south from ball one with Akshar Patel getting Zak Crawley for a duck and then sent back Jonny Bairstow for his second duck of the match. Joe Root (19), Ben Stokes (25), and Ollie Pope (12) were the only England batsmen to reach double figures as Akshar and Ashwin ran riot.
Akshar picked 5/32 and completed his 10 wickets in the match. He finished with figures of 11/70, his first 10-wicket haul in Tests, in only his second Test match. Ashwin also picked 4/48 and in the process, reached 600 international wickets and 400 Test wickets as well.
England folded for 81, their lowest Test total against India ever and asked India to chase just 49 runs to win the Test and go 2-1 up in the 4-match Test series. This potential loss will also mean that England will most likely be eliminated from the race of ICC World Test Championship final qualification.
Meanwhile, as the England innings unfolded, former England captain Michael Vaughan had a spectacular meltdown. He has been vocal about the quality of pitches in the ongoing series, already calling the Chennai pitch for the second Test a poor one and when England got out for 112 and 81, Vaughan took to Twitter to vent.
He called the Ahmedabad pitch ‘shite’, said that if such pitches are made, then each team should get 3 innings each. He called the surface awful for Test cricket, but entertaining, in a series of tweets.
