Key events
WICKET! India 235-4 (Sudharsan c Carse b Stokes 61)
Stokes said he took himself to “some dark places” on the final day at Lord’s. He’s doing it again at Old Trafford, trying to burgle a wicket with a ball that most dogs wouldn’t look at.
And he’s done it. Of course he’s done it. Stokes has suckered Sai Sudharsan into a top-edged pull that flew straight down the throat of long leg. Sudharsan can’t believe he’s fallen for it and swishes his bat in frustration.
Stokes, more animated this summer than I can remember, celebrates with another primeval roar.
73rd over: India 235-3 (Sudharsan 61, Jadeja 10) Jadeja dumps Root contemptuously back over his head for four. That’s an excellent shot, which continues a burgeoning counter-attack that has taken some of us by surprise.
72nd over: India 231-3 (Sudharsan 61, Jadeja 6) A bit of width from Stokes allows Sudharsan to play a beautiful back-foot force past backward point for four. He was dropped by Jamie Smith on 20 but has otherwise played with the authority of a veteran.
71st over: India 223-3 (Sudharsan 55, Jadeja 6) The injury to Pant means England should have control of the scoreboard until the second new ball. Should. Sudharsan has played carefully and Jadeja doesn’t play many attacking strokes.
Jadeja plays no stroke whatsoever to a delivery from Root that skids on and doesn’t miss off stump by much. Root puts his hands to his head in frustration; in truth I think it was a safe enough leave.
70th over: India 223-3 (Sudharsan 54, Jadeja 5) Stokes, who will never ask somebody to bowl the sour overs from 70-80 if he can do it himself, replaces Woakes and is edged through the gap for four by Jadeka. I don’t think it carried but it was well bowled.
“Hi, Rob,” says Smylers. “When you described Shubman Gill’s wicket as ‘Brobdingnagian’, I knew what the word meant — but only because I looked it up last night, after you used it for the wickets of Nat Sciver-Brunt and Sophia Dunkley.
“Have you been challenged to use it in OBO updates? Or do you just like it because it has ‘Rob’ in the middle of it? Can we expect coinages from other literary works to start appearing in the OBO — perhaps a bowler leaving a batter biffsquiggled?”
A challenge? Like a bet? It’s just your imagination, Smylers. Besides, if I was trying to shoehorn words that include my name I’d have started with pentachloronitrobenzene.
Sai Sudharsan’s first Test fifty!
69th over: India 217-3 (Sudharsan 53, Jadeja 0) Joe Root comes into the attack, something that might have happened earlier with all the left-handers in India’s top six. Sudharsan hammers his second ball through the covers for four to reach a quietly superb fifty, his first at this level in his second appearance: 134 balls, six fours, oodles of patience. Really well played.
68th over: India 212-3 (Sudharsan 48, Jadeja 0) “Following along from the actual Test for the first time ever – a Christmas present for my cricket-daft son,” writes Allan MacDonald. “TMS have just had a discussion about how ‘it’s not exactly cold, but…’. I want to be very clear – it’s not bloody cold at all! I’ve been in a T-shirt since about 1145… (Although that may be due to my adaptation to Invernessian climes…)”
With such a hardy disposition, I trust you were at the Island Games in Orkney last week as well.
Rishabh Pant retires hurt on 37
A dinky mobile ambulance is being driven onto the field, and Ravindra Jadeja has come out to the middle as Pant’s replacement. Pant is in serious pain here and may have broken a metatarsal; if so, you’d imagine his series is over. Let’s hope not – he has provided so much entertainment in this series.
Pant may have to retire hurt. He’s in a lot of pain and his foot has ballooned just below his little toe. There’s a tendency to laugh whenever something happens to Pant, simply because he is the most hilarious* cricketer in history, but this looks nasty.
* That’s an entirely complimentary usage of the H-word
Pant is not out! Yep, there’s a spike on UltraEdge so Pant’s wonderfully ludicrous innings will continue. But not yet: he’s hobbling round, having been hit on the boot by that ball from Woakes, so the umpires have called for a drinks break.
England review for LBW against Pant
He made a Horlicks of a comical attempt to reverse sweep Woakes, but I’m pretty sure there was a bottom edge onto the boot.
67th over: India 211-3 (Sudharsan 47, Pant 37) Pant clobbers Dawson in the air and wide of mid-off for four. Stokes didn’t pick the ball up at all, though it was a long way to his left and even he wouldn’t have been able to catch that.
66th over: India 203-3 (Sudharsan 47, Pant 29) England look like a team who are waiting for the second new ball – but that’s still 14 overs away so they need an alternative plan. For now the scoreboard is under control, though even a relatively sedate Rishabh Pant has lifted the run-rate above three an over.
65th over: India 201-3 (Sudharsan 46, Pant 28) Pant has an absurdly good record against left-arm spinners, most of it written in sixes. For now he’s happy to milk low-risk singles, one of which brings up the 200. India have batted admirably today, suppressing the ego* for the good of the team.
* Most of the time
64th over: India 197-3 (Sudharsan 44, Pant 26) A maiden from Woakes to Sudharsan. The forecast is better tomorrow; or, to put it another way, England could be entering a world of pain if they don’t take any more wickets tonight.
England warned for slow over-rate
It took England longer than 90 seconds to start a new over, hence the warning for the umpires. I think there’s a five-run penalty if they are warned again, but I need to double check that and there just isn’t time.
63rd over: India 197-3 (Sudharsan 44, Pant 26) Dawson replaces the ailing Carse and almost gets Sudharsan with a ball that keeps low and sneaks under the bat. Sudharsan could easily have dragged that on.
Apparently England were given an official warning for farting around at the end of the previous over. As we thought at the time, Lord’s 2025 was the crawl that broke the camel’s back.
62nd over: India 195-3 (Sudharsan 43, Pant 25) Woakes replaces Archer and concedes four. I missed most of it was I was compiling the Pant table below, but the commentators didn’t use any exclamation marks so I assume it was uneventful stuff.
Most sixes by a batter in a Test series overseas
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16 Rishabh Pant (England v India, 2025)
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15 Shimron Hetmyer (Bangladesh v West Indies, 2018-19)
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14 Wasim Raja (West Indies v Pakistan, 1976-77)
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13 Brendon McCullum (Pakistan v New Zealand, 2014-15); Ben Stokes (South Africa v England, 2015-16)
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12 Several, including Shubman Gill in this series
61st over: India 191-3 (Sudharsan 40, Pant 24) Pant looks so comfortable, in fact, that he has just swiped a full back from Carse over mid-on for six. I mean, why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t everyone?
I suspect that, when the dust settles on this series, Pant’s performance will go down as one of the greats by a visiting batter in England. He’s pushing 500 runs and he’s tossed his bat to all parts, never mind hitting the bowlers there. Oh, and that sixth was his 16th of the summer – a new record for a batter in an overseas series.
In other news, Carse is grimacing and moving gingerly. He hasn’t looked right today.
60th over: India 182-3 (Sudharsan 39, Pant 17) Archer squares Pant up with a lovely delivery that hits him on the thigh and bounces short of Crawley at third slip. I only mention Crawley because at first it looked like it came off the edge.
It’s worth noting that Archer’s pace has been down on the Lord’s Test. His fastest ball today is 89.1 mph; at Lord’s it was 93.1 mph.
It’s very gloomy at Old Trafford, superb bowling conditions on the face of it, but Sudharsan and Pant look comfortable. It feels like time for Chris Woakes and/or Ben Stokes to come on.
59th over: India 179-3 (Sudharsan 38, Pant 15) Four bonus runs – well, leg-byes – to India when Carse strays onto the pads of Sudharsan. Carse has been a fair way short of his best; even with a nine-day break between games, he must be feeling the 117 overs he bowled in the first three Tests.
“There have been oodles of scientific studies of cricket ball behaviours – swing, spin, reversing etc – but are there any genuine examples considering the effect of the lights?” wonders John Starbuck. “It’s difficult to allow for different conditions at particular grounds and weather, but if there’s anything in it, surely it would have been shown up by now?”
John, do I look like some kind of über-nerdy scientist? Hold on, forget tha- Now that’s just insulting.
Erm, I don’t really know. Presumably it’s related to the conditions that necessitate use of the floodlights rather than the lights themselves.
58th over: India 174-3 (Sudharsan 38, Pant 14) Rishabh Pant had started his innings rather sedately. That sentence is in the past tense because he has just slog-swept Jofra Archer for four. Yep.
Better still, he tried to reverse-sweep the next ball and was hit on the rump. “What’s he doing?” says Mike Atherton on Sky Sports.
He’s being Rishabh Pant.
57th over: India 164-3 (Sudharsan 35, Pant 9) Sudharsan is sent back by Pant, drops his bat and has to sprint to make his ground. He has plenty of time in the end, but for a split second there was the potential for rare farce.
I’m not sure about England’s tactics here. The floodlights are on and they are bowling at least two balls an over in their own half of the pitch. Get JK Lever on!
56th over: India 163-3 (Sudharsan 35, Pant 8) Sudharsan is beaten by a seductive outswinger from Archer. That’s the kind of delivery he bowled on the first day at Headingley in 2019. On that occasion Archer reduced his pace, made the ball talk and ran through Australia with 6 for 45.
He’s still searching for his first wicket of this game. When he drops short, Sudharsan plays a majestic pull for four, one leg off the ground like Gordon Greenidge.
For a guy who has been recalled to play only his second Test, in a match his team cannot afford to lose, Sudharsan has been hugely impressive.
55th over: India 159-3 (Sudharsan 31, Pant 8) A fuller ball from Carse beats Pant’s slightly absent-minded defensive push. He pummels the middle of the pitch the moment Sudharsan gets on strike, though, which suggests that policy will continue.
A quiet over, four from it.
54th over: India 155-3 (Sudharsan 30, Pant 5) Archer returns in place of Stokes, presumably with Rishabh Pant in mind. They had a short but memorable battle on the final morning at Lord’s.
Sudharsan pulls a short ball over backward square leg and away for four. Carse didn’t pick the ball up at long leg; there was no chance of a catch but under normal circumstances he might have saved the boundary. The enveloping gloom – I mean at Old Trafford, not on Planet Earth – is such that the floodlights are on. That often helps the ball move sideways, so England might put the short-ball ploy on the backburner.
“I get that Shoaib Bashir’s team-mates like him, he has a lot of potential, and one wicket and some parsimonious overs don’t mean Liam Dawson is the future, especially at 35,” begins Ian in Tokyo. “But the enforced dropping of Bashir and recall of Dawson has strengthened England’s bowling, batting and fielding. Hard to see a reason to pick a non-batting, non-fielding spinner if he’s not a match-winner with the ball, isn’t it?”
I’d say it’s a bit more complicated than that, primarily because of conditions in Australia. But I agree with your main point; I’d imagine everyone does. A lot has changed since England invested in Bashir last year and Dawson’s case was almost irresistible. I say ‘almost’ as it took an injury for England to pick him.
53rd over: India 150-3 (Sudharsan 26, Pant 4) Pant charges the first ball after tea, of course, he does, and heaves it along the floor to mid-on. A single later in the over allows England to resume their short-ball attack on Sudharsan; he defends fairly comfortably.
“Notwithstanding what’s happened in the last hour, can you remember a better touring opening partnership in recent years?” wonders Luke Dealtry. “Australia haven’t had one this good for ages.”
I reckon they’re the best since… India’s last tour in 2021, when KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma sold rock and roll back to the Americans Boycottian batting back to the English. I thought Usman Khawaja and David Warner did well in 2023. Warner also added a heap of runs with Chris Rogers in 2015, though that was a peculiar series – Australia struggled when the ball bowled sideways and eviscerated England when it didn’t.
The players are back on the field. Brydon Carse is coming into the attack in place of Liam Dawson.
Alas Smith and, er, Gill
It must be so hard for any batter, especially a young captain, to maintain anything resembling form when they start a series as spectacularly as Shubman Gill.
As we mentioned, South African captain Graeme Smith experienced a similar drop-off 22 years ago.
Graeme Smith (2003)
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First two Tests 277, 85, 259 (average 207)
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Last three Tests 35, 5, 2, 14, 18, 19 (average 16)
Shubman Gill (2025)
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First two Tests 147, 8, 269, 161 (average 146)
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Last three Tests 16, 6, 12 (average 11)
Tea
52nd over: India 149-3 (Sudharsan 26, Pant 3) Stokes has at least three, possibly four catchers on the leg side for Sudharsan. No matter: Sudharsan takes most of the last over of the afternoon session and calmly sees India through to tea.
It was England’s session: they took three vital wickets for 71 in 26 overs, with Liam Dawson’s dismissal of Yashasvi Jaiswal the champagne moment.
The wicket of Gill was Stokes’ 15th of the English summer. He has never taken 20 in a single Test season, a peculiar statistic that will probably change in the next fortnight. It would verify what the naked eye has been screaming all summer: after three years of misery, Stokes the bowler is back.
51st over: India 147-3 (Sudharsan 25, Pant 2) With only a few minutes remaining before tea, Pant resists the urge to blast Liam Dawson into a galaxy far, far away, settling instead for a safe single and some soft-handed defensive stokes. Dawson has bowled well; on commentary, Ravi Shastri makes the point that his ability to control the scoring rate helped build pressure before that Stokes wicket.
50th over: India 145-3 (Sudharsan 24, Pant 1) Rishabh Pant is the new batter. He takes a single, then Sudharsan pulls superrbly for four. Stokes applauds him sarcastically before ramming in another short ball that Sudharsan mis-pulls on the bounce to leg slip. The temperature is rising.
Gill is out! And he takes a review with him because there were three reds. Gill padded up top a lovely nipbacker from Stokes that hit him around the kneeroll and would have gone on to hit the top of off stump.
Rod Tucker took an age to give the decision, with Stokes beseeching him to raise the finger. That’s three failures in a row for Gill – the same thing happened to Graeme Smith in 2003 – and, in the context of the series, another Brobdingnagian wicket for Stokes.
WICKET! India 140-3 (Gill LBW b Stokes 12)
Shubman Gill has reviewed but England are sure this is out.
49th over: India 140-2 (Sudharsan 20, Gill 12) India’s run rate of 2.86 is a reflection of some accurate bowling, a slow outfield and an unusually restrained innings from Yashasvi Jaiswal. Their performance has been quite similar to England’s on the first day at Lord’s.
Smith drops Sudharsan on 20
48th over: India 139-2 (Sudharsan 20, Gill 11) Sudharsan is put down by Jamie Smith! He was caught down the leg side in the first Test and Stokes was aiming for exactly the same dismissal. Sudharsan got a thick inside edge to the right of Smith, who almost dived past the ball and couldn’t take what should have been a pretty comfortable catch.
47th over: India 138-2 (Sudharsan 20, Gill 11) Ravi Shastri, who was a left-arm spinner in a former life, is in the Sky Sports commentary box and sounds very impressed with Liam Dawson – particularly his accuracy. Gill tries to do something about that, running down to thump a drive that just clears the leaping Stokes at mid-on. Fine margins, part 32423534563460943.
46th over: India 132-2 (Sudharsan 19, Gill 6) Stokes, who dismissed Sudharsan in both innings at Headingley, replaces Archer. Three slips in place, nobody down the leg side. Sudharsan defends a few deliveries before playing tip and run on the off side.
45th over: India 131-2 (Sudharsan 18, Gill 6) One of the shots of the day from Sudharsan, a rubber-wristed drive through extra cover for four off Dawson. He’s looking increasingly confident, the Sudharsan India envisaged when they picked him, and he plays two more very confident attacking strokes without beating the infield.
44th over: India 126-2 (Sudharsan 14, Gill 5) Archer’s 12th over of the day passes without incident. We don’t have the data to hand but it feels like the batters have been made to play at a helluva lot of those 72 deliveries. Accuracy and bounce, rather than movement and searing pace, have been his greatest weapons today. His figures are 12-2-23-0.
43rd over: India 124-2 (Sudharsan 13, Gill 4) Dawson’s recall is a symbol of England’s increased pragmatism, a change of approach that has crept up on us after all those grand statements in the first couple of years. It’d be fascinating to know whether it was a collective decision for Stokes, McCullum and Key or just part of the team’s evolution.
Dawson continues to Gill with a slip and leg slip; the latter is almost in the game when, out of nothing, Gill drags an agricultural sweep into the ground and through the legs of Pope.
42nd over: India 122-2 (Sudharsan 13, Gill 2) The arrival of Shubman Gill means an increase in the amount of gum-flapping from the England fielders. Gill plays a typically serene extra-cover drive off Archer that is very well stopped; four runs becomes one (not another Spice Girls reference FFS) and Sudharsan plays out the rest of the over.
The last ball, which kicked from a length, was especially well played.
41st over: India 120-2 (Sudharsan 13, Gill 1) Never mind what that wicket means to Liam Dawson; never mind that human story. This is a joyous day for the Wisden podcast team of Mark Butcher, Yas Rana, Phil Walker and friends, who have spent most of the last two years cursing Dawson’s absence from the England team.
After eight years out of the Test team, Liam Dawson has struck with his seventh ball. It was tossed up well wide of off stump, drawing Jaiswal into a nervous defensive push away from his body. The ball skidded on to take the edge and was nicely caught by Harry Brook at slip. For the second Test in succession, an England bowler has had a fairytale start on his return to the side.
WICKET! India 120-2 (Jaiswal c Brook b Dawson 58)
Welcome back! Liam Dawson has picked up Yashasvi Jaiswal, who normally eats orthodox spin for breakfast, lunch and the rest, with a lovely delivery.
40th over: India 120-1 (Jaiswal 58, Sudharsan 13) Jofra Archer goes to bed dreaming of having two left-handers to bowl at, among other things, and he continues his third spell with a maiden to Sudharsan.
Archer has been very accurate today, which is reflected in figures of 10-2-20-0.
Thanks Daniel, hello everyone. Before you ask, the A in my name stands for Archibald, which is why so many people are intent on calling me ‘Baldy’.
