[Lord Snooty]

Shows how much Joe Root's runs have been propping the rest of the team up.

[themaclad]

India 329 (Pant 58*, Moeen 4-128) and 54 for 1 lead England 134 (Ashwin 5-43) by 249 runs

India took giant strides towards levelling the series in Chennai after running through England and then building steadily on a 195-run lead. Fifteen wickets fell in the day, R Ashwin claiming five of them in an innings for the 29th time in Tests, as England's hopes of hanging in the contest on a turning pitch were obliterated in two sessions of skittish batting.


England were in trouble from the outset of their reply, losing Rory Burns in the opening over and Joe Root, the batting talisman during three consecutive wins in Sri Lanka and India, before he had managed double - let alone triple - figures. They sneaked past the follow-on mark thanks to a nuggety, unbeaten 42 from Ben Foakes, but India were doubtless content to bat again on a commanding lead, and leave England to worry about facing their demons on days three and four.

Chepauk might be dry as a tinderbox but England needed more than a spark to turn the third innings into the sort of conflagration that might get them back into the game. Jack Leach chipped out Shubman Gill cheaply but once again Rohit Sharma marshalled the India batting effort, although England felt aggrieved when he was given not out on review after appearing to offer no shot against Moeen Ali - the impact was outside off but the ball would have hit middle stump. Rohit also successfully utilised the DRS after Leach won an lbw decision in the following over, with Ultra-Edge confirming an edge on his reverse-sweep.

India had already forged themselves a strong position on the back of Rohit's conditions-defying 161 on day one, and although they could only add 29 runs to their overnight 300 for 6, the bowlers were soon tucking into their work on a responsive surface.

Ishant Sharma trapped Burns lbw third ball for the opener's second consecutive duck and Ashwin struck twice either side the dismissal of Root to leave England in dire straits on 39 for 4 at lunch. Axar Patel, on debut, was the man to deny England's captain and batting bellwether a first-innings hundred for the first time this year, detonating a sharply turning delivery as Root looked to deploy his favoured sweep shot, a top edge safely pouched by Ashwin at short fine leg.

Ashwin, on his home ground, gave an exemplary display of how to harness helpful conditions, alternating his pace, lines of attack and method of delivery to keep England's batsman pinned down. Dom Sibley was his first victim, caught at short leg off the back of the bat attempting to sweep, while Dan Lawrence struck a tortured pose through much of his 52-balls innings, which ended with the last delivery before lunch and a catch to short leg. Lawrence's slump over his bat handle said much about the tourists' chances.

With Ben Stokes seemingly opting against the "take a few runs with me" approach in the hope of getting accustomed to the surface as the ball lost its hardness, England continued to creep along at around two an over - but the inevitable occurred when Ashwin struck again to remove Stokes for the ninth time in Tests. India had burned a review before lunch, when Ashwin hit Stokes on the back leg only for ball-tracking to show it going over, but he bypassed such considerations with a beautifully flighted delivery that defeated the batsman in the air and off the pitch to shudder off stump.

From 52 for 5, England briefly cobbled some resistance, as Ollie Pope and Foakes put together a 35-run stand - their highest of the match. But having grazed in the outfield for almost 40 overs of his first home Test, Mohammed Siraj produced a wicket-taking intervention with his first delivery, Rishabh Pant's leaping, one-handed take down the leg side accounting for Pope.

Moeen and Olly Stone fell in quick succession before tea, and it needed some doughty resistance from Foakes, playing his first Test in almost two years, to steer them past the follow-on target. Pant then produced another stunning catch - part of a blemish-free showing behind the stumps - to dislodge Leach and Stuart Broad dragged a sweep on to his stumps to complete Ashwin's five-wicket haul.

Pant had been the danger man, as far as England were concerned, at the start of the day, although they managed to sneak through largely unscathed after India resumed in pursuit of quick runs stretch their advantage. Two wickets fell in Moeen's first over, the second of the morning, and while Pant helped himself to four more boundaries on the way to an unbeaten 58, England wrapped up the innings via two in three balls for Stone. But as the events of the day unfolded, it was clear that India were already in control of their own destiny.

Alan Gardner is a deputy editor at ESPNcricinfo. @alanroderick

[themaclad]

England 134 and 53 for 3 (Lawrence 19*, Root 2*) need 429 more runs to beat India 329 and 286 (Ashwin 106, Kohli 62, Moeen 4-98, Leach 4-100)

As India flexed their muscle on day three, moving inexorably towards a series-levelling triumph over England, the second Chennai Test began to take on a carnival feel. Already well ahead in the game and with time to indulge, they served up an exhibition for a grateful Chepauk crowd. R Ashwin, the local hero, proved himself worthy of such billing with a fifth Test hundred and England were hanging on by stumps as the ball fizzed and the close catchers circled.


After the subcontinental batting masterclass, followed closely by a trial against spin, now was the moment for England to contend with an Indian wall of sound. Despite scrapping hard to take five wickets during the morning session, they were steadily enveloped by the hoots, whistles and cheers from the stands, as first Virat Kohli and then Ashwin steadied India's second innings, before the home spinners returned to their task with relish.

Notionally, England needed 482 to win or two-and-a-bit days of rearguard resistance. Practically, they were merely searching for scraps of encouragement to accompany them on the road to Ahmedabad.

There could be no more appropriate thala in the home team's efforts to drive home their advantage than Ashwin. He came into this came having not passed 50 in a Test since 2017, but after taking an aggressive approach from the outset, he eventually reached a raucously received hundred during the evening session - achieving the double of a century and a five-wicket haul in the same match for the third time. Just imagine the decibel level if Chepauk had been at more than 50% capacity.

His route to three figures had featured numerous sweeps, a few hearty biffs and no little drama. When India resumed after tea, Ashwin was on 68 and had only the last two batsmen to keep him company; he might have been stumped straight away, but the ball eluded Ben Foakes - the brilliance of whose keeping had kept up English spirits earlier in the day - and he was still 23 short when Mohammed Siraj walked out at the fall of the ninth wicket.

But with the crowd cheering every dot ball that Siraj negotiated, Ashwin raised the tempo and the volume. England took the new ball but Ashwin carved Jack Leach away to move into the 90s, then took on Moeen Ali, striking a clean six into the stands before charging down to slice four more to third man and bring team-mates, family and spectators to their feet.

No one celebrated more gleefully than Siraj, who having upheld his part of the bargain swung a couple over the ropes himself as India's last-wicket pair added 49 to give England one final kick, as well as silence any lingering discontent about the state of the pitch. The issue on a turning surface has simply been one of skill, and despite a more proactive batting effort England were soon in trouble once again.

For the seventh time in eight attempts, England's openers failed to take the scoreboard past 17, as Dom Sibley was pinned by an Axar Patel arm ball. Rory Burns and Dan Lawrence enjoyed marginally greater success with a deliberate attempt to use their feet, but Ashwin picked up his sixth wicket of the match when Burns closed the face to be caught at gully, and Patel removed nightwatchman Leach to leave England three down at the clos


Having failed so abysmally with the bat first time around, England were given an extended spell in detention for their fourth-innings examination. Wickets fell quickly inside the first hour of the day, with Foakes' glovework responsible for two stumpings and a run-out, but Kohli and Ashwin were able to fashion an extended union as the ball got softer. Having come in on a pair and taken 20 balls to get going, Kohli played with steely resolve in conditions that were still tricky, passing 50 for the second time in the series during a 96-run stand.

Kohli was eventually trapped lbw by Moeen, who claimed an eight-wicket haul on his return to Test cricket, but the force was increasingly with Ashwin as England missed several chances to dismiss him. Stuart Broad was twice the unlucky bowler during an old-ball spell of fast legcutters with the keeper up to the stumps: Ben Stokes could not hold on one-handed at slip with Ashwin on 28, and Foakes put down a thin outside edge (off a 132kph/82mph delivery) when he had made 56.

England were perhaps already resigned to their fate, but Foakes' efforts deserved to be remembered for the soft hands and lightning reactions that did for Rohit Sharma and Rishabh Pant - making him the first England wicketkeeper to effect three stumpings in a men's Test since Alan Knott in 1968. That will remain a footnote in a Test that is all over by the shouting (and whistling) in Chennai.

Alan Gardner is a deputy editor at ESPNcricinfo. @alanroderick

[Lord Snooty]

Been impressed with Foakes. Don't know why he got left out after making such an impact early on.

[themaclad]

India 329 (Rohit 161, Rahane 67, Pant 58*, Moeen 4-128) and 286 (Ashwin 106, Kohli 62, Moeen 4-98, Leach 4-100) beat England 134 (Foakes 42*, Ashwin 5-43) and 164 (Moeen 43, Axar 5-60) by 317 runs

India cruised to victory in a little over a session on the fourth day at Chepauk, Axar Patel collecting a five-wicket haul on debut as England went down by a crushing margin of 317 runs - emphatic retribution after the tourists had gone 1-0 up on this ground less than a week earlier.

Having seen his side dominate the match from toss to finishing tape, Virat Kohli's satisfaction was as palpable at his disgruntlement after the first Test. On a classically subcontinental surface, England twice could barely match the individual contribution of India's first-innings centurion, Rohit Sharma, and were left with precious few scraps with which to slink off to Ahmedabad ahead of the day-night encounter.

The only slight regret for another enthusiastic crowd came in the absence of a R Ashwin landmark for them to acknowledge - he finished with 8 for 96, narrowly short of becoming only the fourth man to score a century and take ten-for in a Test.

England's task on their return to the ground was a near-futile one, but there was the potential to spend time in the middle against India's spinners and salt away knowledge for the battles ahead. As it was, only Joe Root spent any significant amount of time at the crease - even 33 from 92 balls was modest by his recent standards - and barely a shot was played in anger until Moeen Ali decided to go down swinging with five towering sixes before being last man out, stumped off Kuldeep Yadav.

Fittingly for a Test that saw some grumbling about the pitch but was more memorable for the displays of high-class wicketkeeping, the game ended with the ball in the hands of Rishabh Pant. This was only the sixth time in Tests that a match had featured five or more stumpings - and India's march to victory on the fourth morning began with another, as Dan Lawrence charged at Ashwin only to be nutmegged, leaving Pant to seal his fate after collecting brilliantly down the leg side.


That dismissal brought out Ben Stokes, searching for pointers in his ongoing duel with India's offspinner. Despite digging in as the ball ripped and spun - one delivery from over the wicket nearly took him on the chin before Pant collected it above his head - Stokes was rendered near-strokeless, facing 38 balls from Ashwin of which 36 were dots, the last also bringing his wicket as an inside edge ricocheted off pad to slip.

Patel picked up his third, following the dismissals of Dom Sibley and Jack Leach on the third evening, when Ollie Pope shovelled a slog-sweep straight to deep midwicket, and although Mohammed Siraj dropped Root with the lunch break approaching, Kuldeep Yadav was finally able to enjoy the feeling of taking a Test wicket, more than two years after his previous appearance, when Ben Foakes swept without conviction and was taken on the edge of the square.

India rounded the rest up without much delay, as Root received a near-unplayable ball, which took the top glove as he pressed forward and flew to slip, and Olly Stone became another victim of the sweep to complete Patel's five-for. Moeen had some fun with 43 off 18 balls as England at least managed to surpass their first-innings total - but nothing could take the shine off as India rewarded the returning Chepauk crowd with a thumping win, and the afternoon free.

Alan Gardner is a deputy editor at ESPNcricinfo. @alanroderick

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

I know the policy is to rotate players between Tests in this tour, but honestly, I think for the third match Root just has to look long and hard at the performances so far and field the best team on paper.

[themaclad]

Moeen going home

[Lord Snooty]

Sky have got exclusive rights to the t20s and ODIs in India.

Should think so too. Can't have all and sundry watching on C4 and bringing popularity into the game.

[themaclad]

Stumps: India 99 for 3 (Rohit 57*, Rahane 1*, Leach 2-27) trail England 112 (Crawley 53, Patel 6-38, Ashwin 3-26) by 13 runs

What do you see when you look at a pink ball? As Joe Root had indicated on the eve of the Ahmedabad Test, there's not a lot of data to back up any preconceptions about day-night Test cricket. Therefore, both sets of players came into this contest at perfect liberty to see in the conditions whatever they so chose.

Ben Stokes, for England's part, had been "licking his lips" in anticipation of a seam-dominated joust in what he clearly envisaged being the Trent Bridge of the East. And sure enough, England's optimistic surge continued on the morning of the match, as James Anderson and Stuart Broad were thrown together for one last heist, like the cast of Ocean's 14, before Root won a crucial toss and handed his batsmen the same opportunity that they had seized upon in the first Test - a chance to post a gargantuan first innings and dominate the match narrative through sheer weight of runs.

Well, so much for the best-laid plans and all that. Unfortunately for England's dreamers, India saw clean through the optics, and the lacquer, and all the paraphernalia that comes with this most fundamental switch of the sport's basics. Instead they looked directly at another dry, dusty red-earthed deck, and opened their ears to the sweet music of 50,000 passionate fans at the newly minted Narendra Modi stadium - which, even when half full, was still more populated than almost any ground bar the MCG.

The upshot was an ardour-dousing day of one-sided dominance - one that has emphatically killed off any hopes of Root's men emulating those of Sir Alastair Cook nine years ago, and inflicting on India a rare home series defeat. The late dismissal of Virat Kohli was a boost to their hopes of limiting their deficit but by that stage Rohit Sharma was rumbling on towards another century - very different, but no less emphatic, to the game-breaker he produced on the first day of the previous Test.

And though Anderson and Broad proved predictably parsimonious in their combined analysis of 15-7-27-0, they had been fighting the rising tide from their opening spells after England's catastrophic batting malfunction had surrendered any right to set the match agenda. Instead, England's attentions began to stray to factors beyond their control - most notably, the state of the footmarks that were forming big cavities for their heavy-limbed seamers, and the state of the TV umpiring, which reprieved each of India's openers on evidence that may have been correct but was less-than-conclusive, much to Root's mounting fury.

Instead, the mastery of R Ashwin - in his 77th Test and now odds-on to reach 400 wickets before the match is done - was matched for the second Test in a row by the eager apprenticeship of Axar Patel, who proved his debut in Chennai had been no fluke by improving on his Test-best figures with a remarkable haul of 6 for 38 in 21.4 overs.

Between them, they harvested the doubts that still lingered from that last Test, and instigated a collapse that was remarkable even by the standards of England's last visit to India in 2016-17.

From a pre-lunch scoreline of 74 for 2, with Zak Crawley batting with uncommon poise and panache, England squandered their last eight wickets for 38 in 17 overs - almost universally spooked by the fear of what might have been, rather than by any unplayability on the part of the balls that did them in.

Between them the spinners accounted for nine of England's ten all told - the exception being Dom Sibley, who flinched to slip in the third over for a duck to give Ishant Sharma a souvenir from his 100th Test appearance. On the evidence of the rest of the innings, Ishant is unlikely to be over-worked in the next few days.

Despite some unconventional seam movement for Jasprit Bumrah in particular, India turned to spin as early as the seventh over - and were not made to wait for vindication. Jonny Bairstow, hailed as England's missing link in Chennai despite a top score of 47 in his two appearances at No. 3 in Sri Lanka, showed that visualisation hadn't been a big part of his rest-and-rotation break. He poked uncertainly at his first ball from Axar and was slammed on the knee-roll by the ball that didn't turn - his wasteful use of the review merely compounding his confusion.

That brought Root to the middle several hours earlier than he would have liked - although in his earliest overs, he was at least shielded by an extraordinary flurry from Crawley at the other end. It would prove all too brief in the end, but while it lasted, Crawley's timing was stunning - right from his very first scoring shot, a non-committal block that pinged through long-on off Bumrah.

He continued in the same vein en route to a 68-ball fifty, replete with drives and clips whenever seamer and spinner alike over-pitched. And just as Rohit had transcended the conditions in Chennai through his uncompromising weight of stroke, so Crawley appeared to be providing the forward momentum that England needed to post a competitive total. So long as he endured, and enabled Root to grow into his day's work, the chance was there to make a good toss count.

But then, on 17, Root made a fatal misjudgement - Ashwin's brilliance is through the air every bit as much off the pitch, and having given the impression in his first three Tests of the winter that he was infallible to the trickery of all spinners, Root chose to slide onto the back foot to a ball that just kept hanging in the air longer than he had anticipated, and was pinned in front of middle and leg as the ball pitched and gripped. Tellingly, he had barely unfurled a single sweep in the course of his 37-ball stay.

Moments earlier, England had seemed set to claim the morning spoils. Instead, their mood was wrecked three overs later, as Crawley succumbed to the best double-whammy of the day. Two deliveries from Axar, pitching in almost identical spots - the first ripped venomously past the outside edge; the second kissed straight on through, off the deck, into the knee-roll, to leave England on 80 for 4 and with two new batsmen at the crease.

The first of those, Ollie Pope, didn't even see out the over after lunch, as he too was done in by Ashwin's flight, and beaten around the outside edge by another ball that skipped on through to hit off stump. And one over later, Stokes surrendered on the back foot to Axar, pinned in front of off as he rocked back and simply missed with a defensive poke. At Chennai, he'd been launching such deliveries over midwicket in a "get them before they get you" mindset, but here he felt obliged to drop anchor for the cause, to no avail.

The rest were rounded up with minimal fuss - Ben Foakes the last to go for a becalmed 12 from 58 balls as he too missed a straight one, bowled by Axar as he rocked back to cut and missed. In mitigation, the timing of their final collapse - an hour into the afternoon session - did mean that England would be bowling as the witching hour set in, but it was going to take a bout of necromancy from Anderson and Broad to revive England from this point.


Suffice to say, it did not transpire. Both men were promoted to the new ball ahead of Archer - which was food for thought in itself after the manner in which Archer had roughed up Rohit in the first innings at Chennai - but in their familiar, self-preservatory fashion, both men dragged their lengths back, almost subconsciously, to avoid being driven, rather than attack from the outset in the do-or-die manner that the moment required.

Shubman Gill, for his part, did his utmost to ride out the threat - he took 27 balls to score his first run, by which stage he had been reprieved by the third umpire after Stokes at second slip failed to close his fingers around a low edge off Broad. Archer eventually scalped him with the short ball, but it was too little too late for England's hopes - which were perhaps best summed up by Pope's eventful few minutes in the field in the closing overs.

One moment, he came close to pulling off a world-class one-handed take at short leg as he pre-meditated Rohit's sweep and launched himself to his right. The next, no doubt still brooding on the one that got away, he dropped Kohli at slip off the luckless Anderson, who according to ESPNcricinfo's ball-by-ball data has now induced 73 false strokes and three dropped catches off the main man since he last claimed his wicket seven years ago. On this evidence, he might not get another opportunity before this contest is done and dusted.

Andrew Miller is UK editor of ESPNcricinfo. He tweets at @miller_cricket

[Lord Snooty]

Well that's gone well. Has anybody told Steph she's back on again tomorrow?