England v India 2014 - 2nd Test, day 3: Facts and figures

Ravindra Jadeja celebrates the wicket of James Anderson on day 3 of the 2nd Test

England started day 3 of the 2nd Test against India at Lord’s on the score of 219/6, trailing the visitors by 76 runs. On an overcast morning, the Indian seamers would have expected to finish off the England innings pretty quickly.

However, Liam Plunkett and Matt Prior, the overnight batsmen, started off positively by looking to play their strokes and put pressure back on the bowlers.

The positive approach seemed to be paying off for England until Matt Prior fell prey to a short delivery, from Mohammed Shami, on 23 off 42 balls. Ben Stokes and Stuart Broad fell in quick succession shortly after, giving Bhuvneshwar Kumar his 2nd 5-wicket haul in this series. That meant that James Anderson strode to the crease with England on 285/9, and the Indians would’ve hoped of securing a lead, however small it may be, but Anderson along with Plunkett, who scored his 1st half-century in Test cricket, ended up taking the England total to 319, which has given them a slight psychological advantage going forward.

India, behind England by 24 runs, had 15 difficult minutes to negotiate with the bat before lunch. The Indian openers, Murali Vijay and Shikhar Dhawan, managed to survive that brief period without suffering any damage, as they went into lunch at 11/0, reducing the deficit to 13 runs.

Here are a few facts and figures from day 3 of the 2nd Test-

• 8- With Bhuvneshwar’s 2nd 5-wicket haul in this series, he has become the 8th Indian bowler to take two 5-wicket hauls in England. He is the first bowler, though, to take two 5-wicket hauls in consecutive innings in England.
• 11- That is the number of wickets Bhuvneshwar has taken in the 2 innings that he has bowled in so far. Remarkably, he has already taken 2 more wickets in this series than he had managed in his 12 innings earlier.
• 56- MS Dhoni, with 56 dismissals to his name, has overtaken Alan Knott for the wcket-keeper with most dismissals in Test matches between India and England.
• 5- The number of ducks Ben Stokes has in his last 9 innings for England. It’s no surprise, then, that Stokes is moving lower down the order with each passing innings.
• 50- The number of runs scored by Liam Plunkett in his last six innings before scoring his first-half century.
• 2- The number of hundreds made by Gary Ballance at Lord’s, and he has played only 2 matches. A lot of cricketers talk about the atmosphere at Lord’s being too daunting for them, but Ballance clearly is having no issue.
• 1- Number of wickets taken by Bhuvneshwar after the 20th over of an innings before this series.
• 27.53- Ian Bell’s average in Test cricket since the Ashes series in Australia last year. There has been a lot of pressure on Cook to perform, but Bell hasn’t been pulling up any trees either.
• 5- The number of times that India haven’t introduced a spinner before the 44th over of an innings since 2001.
• 102- Joe Root enjoys a batting average of 102 at Lord’s Not surprisingly, his two highest scores in Test cricket, 200* and 180 against Sri Lanka and Australia respectively, have both come at the ground.
• 26- The number of innings since an Indian opening stand was worth more than 50 in Test matches away from home. The last time that there was a 50+ opening partnership was back in 2011 at Lord’s when Abhinav Mukund and Gautam Gambhir were the openers.
• 3- Virat Kohli’s dismissal for 0 off the bowling of Liam Plunkett was his 3rd duck in Test cricket.
• 2- Kohli has now got out bowled 2 times in his Test career. The earlier occasion was also against England, off the bowling of Graeme Swann, in Ahmedabad in November 2012.
• 22.20- It is clear that Kohli doesn’t enjoy England as an opposition, as his average against England in Test cricket is 22.20.