Harbhajan Singh celebrates the wicket of Stuart Broad with teammates in Mohali on Monday. (Reuters)

Mohali: England’s battery of disciplined seamers didn’t allow India’s star-studded top-order to bloom, thus diminishing the hosts’ chances of forcing a win in the second Test on Monday.

After restricting England to 302 in their first innings, India, who were expected to press for their second successive victory in the RBS Cup, adopted a cautious approach to reach 134 for four at the end of the fourth day.

India have an overall lead of 285 and it will be interesting to see when Mahendra Singh Dhoni finds it appropriate to set England on the chase on Tuesday.

With the light playing truant in the morning session everyday, India are unlikely to have enough time to bowl the visitors out for the second time.

On Monday, the umpires had advanced the start by half an hour to make up for the overs lost, but dense morning fog ruled that out. Play could only be resumed at 11 am.

If India had any chance of extracting a positive result out of this match after skittling out the last four England batsmen with the addition of just 20 runs , the initiative was lost in the two hours between lunch and tea.

India, who were nine without loss at lunch, batted in a clumsy manner to score just 47 runs in 23 overs. To add to their woes, they lost the wickets of Virender Sehwag (17), Rahul Dravid (0) and Sachin Tendulkar (5) in the process.

It could have been worse had not opener Gautam Gambhir (44 off 155 balls) and Yuvraj Singh (39 off 40 balls) played with a lot of responsibility to add 54 runs for the fifth wicket.

While Gambhir managed to hold one end, Yuvraj concentrated on his natural game and in the process picked up five fours and one six.

“Surprisingly, India did not push hard,” said Stuart Broad at the end of the day.

“We had a great chance but they came back as they always do. We have a chance tomorrow if we can get early wickets and restrict their score.”

But then, it would be unfair to put the entire blame on the Indian batsmen for the slow run rate. The England seamers, especially Broad, maintained a probing line and length to make things difficult for the batsmen.

However, the way the Indians went into their shells after the departure of Virender Sehwag did come as a surprise. It was so boring at times that the sarcastic crowd even greeted the singles with claps. It was not exactly the best advertisement for Test cricket.

Sehwag was the first to go after lunch when he set off for a sharp single. Ian Bell, who was at the extra cover, raced in, picked up the ball after Broad had stopped it, and dived to demolish the stumps.

Sehwag just continued running to leave the ground without waiting for the verdict of the third umpire.

Dravid, who had ended his bad patch with a patient 136 in the first innings, survived 19 deliveries without scoring any run. Finally, Broad broke through Dravid’s defence as the ball nipped back off the seam to take away the middle stump.

Tendulkar, who played 22 deliveries to score his five runs, before being dismissed by James Anderson was equally unimpressive.

In the morning, Harbhajan Singh took three lower order wickets to finish with figures of four for 68. After a delayed start, Harbhajan added Matt Prior (2), Broad (1) and Monty Panesar (5) to the key wicket of Kevin Pietersen, whom he removed late on Sunday.