One of the many enduring qualities about Test cricket and its five-day canvas is a team’s ability to stage a comeback. The third day in Ranchi now sits among the countless examples, India not so much turning the tide as utterly parting the waves with first a characterful lower-order rally and then an intoxicating display of spin bowling.
Ben Stokes and his England players had stepped off the team bus in a position of strength, their hosts 134 runs behind with just three first-innings wickets in hand. But by the close the tourists were heading back to their hotel in a state of total deflation, India already 40 runs into a meagre target of 192 and no wickets in the end column.
There was a fair bit for minds to chew on as English heads hit their pillows, not least a dropped catch by Ollie Robinson that came 59 runs into wicketkeeper Dhruv Jurel’s tone-shifting 90 in the morning. Even more consuming was the nosedive with the bat that followed, England rolled for 145 all out after losing their last seven wickets for just 35 runs.
The only consolation came from how Ravichandran Ashwin, five for 51, and Kuldeep Yadav, four for 22, had mustered up such utter mischief from the capricious, cracked surface. Whether a greenhorn attack can do the same on day four – even with Shoaib Bashir buzzing from a maiden five wicket-haul – is another matter.
Plenty went back to the morning session, Jurel and the tail whittling the overnight deficit down to just 46 runs. This was just the starter before the main course, however, with Rohit Sharma handing Ashwin the new ball after lunch and watching the 37-year-old deliver a brilliant, probing display of off-spinners and square-seamed sliders.
It did not take long for the starting pistol to be fired either – the fifth over to be precise – when Ashwin vaporised Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope in the space of two balls. Duckett prodded meekly to short-leg – against his mantra of attack being the best form of defence – while Pope completed his first pair in Test cricket when pinned lbw by the straight one. For all the upside of his position at No 3, he remains a frenetic starter.
But there was no doubt as to the wicket Ashwin prized most among his 35th five-wicket bag, Joe Root trapped lbw for 11 after 36 minutes of defiance. It required a review from Sharma but for all the chuntering in the English dressing room that followed, Root was out. Hawk-Eye showed that Ashwin, around the wicket, had pitched the ball a whisker inside the superimposed line that runs from the outside of the stump. There is no umpire’s call here.
At the other end from the initial chaos of 19 for two and then 65 for three was Zak Crawley, the opener showing the way with a princely 60 from 91 balls full of off-side elan. It took a smart plan to shift him, too, Sharma opening up his preferred scoring zone to invite the drive as Kuldeep, his left-armer, spun one sharply into the stumps.
Might others have followed Crawley’s lead? It was a question Stokes may well have been asking himself at tea, his the fifth wicket to fall with 120 on the board after a slightly tortured 13-ball four. Kuldeep, all mystery from that rare left-arm angle, was again the man to strike here, a shooter that would have seen his mark lbw had it not then rolled on to the stumps.
By this stage Jonny Bairstow had shaped up relatively well for 30 only to chip Ravindra Jadeja to cover off the first ball of the evening session. This left Ben Foakes to marshal an exposed tail which, for all his prowess as a wingman for those higher up, is still not his forte. Foakes could only muster 17 runs as India picked off his partners, England’s wicketkeeper the penultimate man out when Ashwin snaffled up a return catch.
Among this limp conclusion came the demise of Robinson, lbw third ball to Kuldeep, on a pretty forgettable day for the seamer, all told. During the cascade of wickets his earlier drop off Jurel increased in magnitude. Stokes was not exactly thrilled at the time, instantly banishing Robinson from mid-wicket after Jurel’s clip off Bashir burst through his hands.
It just seemed so casual, much like the unthreatening four-over spell that started the day and hovered in the mid-70s on the speed gun. Robinson’s tally of front-foot no-balls also rose to six in his first match since July, and 77 in his Test career overall – one more than his number of wickets. Even with 58 runs in the first dig, he remains a source of frustration.
Kuldeep was much the same for Stokes, with his longest first-class innings, 28 from 131 balls, one half of a 76-run eighth-wicket stand with Jurel before Anderson forced a drag-on. A game of cat and mouse soon followed, the compact and correct Jurel cutting loose after his reprieve and clobbering Bashir for 24 from his next 16 balls.
At 20 years and 135 days, Bashir eventually became the second-youngest England bowler, after Rehan Ahmed in 2022, to claim a five-wicket haul when a slider pinned Akash Deep lbw. Hartley soon wrapped up the innings with his 19th wicket of the series, Jurel finally bowled by a beauty. But that final ball, one that beat the batter on the outside edge to rattle off-stump, merely signposted the chaos that was to follow.
