England were comfortably placed at 119-3 at stumps on the second day of the second cricket Test match being played against India at Lord’s, after bowling India out for a first innings total of 364. Joe Root was at the crease leading the fight for the home team with the bat, in the company of Jonny Bairstow, at the end of the day on Friday.
James Anderson claimed five wickets to help England stage a comeback after India were placed at a strong position of 276/3 at the start of the play. The Indian cricket team suffered a batting collapse since they lost seven wickets for only 88 runs with plenty of their batsmen producing a disappointing show once again.
The opening batsman KL Rahul, who scored superb century on the first day of the Test, could not continue to bat for long as he was dismissed in the first over of the day for a total of 129. His partner and Indian team vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane once again flopped horribly with the bat, being dismissed by Anderson for 1.
None of the other Indian batsmen could make an impact on the scorecard barring Rishabh Pant (37) and Ravindra Jadeja (40) to an extent, who ensured that the team had as many runs as possible while there was continuous fall of wickets from both the ends.
Pant was once again aggressive in his innings, hitting five boundaries to make 37 from 58 balls. On the other hand, Jadeja was very calculative and careful as he struck only three fours in his innings of 40 for which he took 120 balls.
Anderson was absolutely magnificent with the ball, taking the wickets of Rohit Sharma and Cheteshwar Pujara on the first day and following it up with Rahane, Jasprit Bumrah (0) and Ishant Sharma (8). The England legendary bowler claimed figures of 29-7-62-5. On the other hand, Ollie Robinson claimed the wickets of Virat Kohli and Rahul whereas Mark Wood also contributed with two wickets. England’s only spinner in the game, Moeen Ali, took 1-53.
In their reply, England were very cautious at the start but their opening batsman once again disappointed. Dom Sibley was dismissed by Mohammed Siraj for 11, who went on to take the wicket of Haseeb Hameed on the first ball that he faced to leave England struggling at a position of 23-2.
Rory Burns teamed up with Root to take England ahead as the two batted comfortably to take their side to a safe position in the contest. The left-handed opening batsman for England was very convincing but he could not complete his half-century when Mohammed Shami dismissed him LBW for 49 from 136 balls with the help of seven fours.
At the close of play, Joe Root was batting on 48 from 75 balls with the help of six boundaries and along with him at the crease was Bairstow batting on six.
