Captain Shubman Gill’s dismissal early on Monday off Brydon Carse must have set off flutters in the Team India camp. With three wickets down, the overall lead was only 98 then.
Opener KL Rahul resumed steadily, but for India to force the issue and put the heat back on England, they needed another Rishabh Pant special. And the keeper-batter obliged.
After his 134 in the first innings, Pant produced another stroke-filled knock of 118, complementing Rahul — the other centurion of the innings — as the duo’s 195-run fourth-wicket stand was pivotal to setting England a stiff 371-run target and giving India a bit of an upper hand going into the final day of this opening Test at Headingley.
At stumps on Day IV, openers Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett remained unscathed as England were 21/0.
The authority with which Rahul and Pant batted, India had a great chance of extending their lead beyond 400. But again, the lower order failed to put up any resistance.
After Rahul’s dismissal, the remaining five wickets fell for just 31, which further underpins the significance of his partnership with Pant.
Calculative approach
There wasn’t any acrobatic flip this time from Pant once he got to 100 with a single off Shoaib Bashir towards the close of the post-lunch session. From the stands, Sunil Gavaskar wanted him to do the flip, but Pant smiled and signalled that he would do it later.
The celebration was a tad muted by Pant’s standards, but this eighth Test ton of his should go down as one of the most crucial ones so far in his career. Though this Leeds pitch still has no real demons, barring a few indentations, the conditions on Monday morning were overcast.
Being a little adventurous early on, Pant was wise enough to realise the need to temper down, with Rahul too trying to keep him calm. The actual acceleration began after Pant had crossed 50. Tonking off-spinner Bashir for back-to-back maximums, Pant’s intentions were clear.
Banking on his hand-eye coordination, Pant butchered anything that was pitched in his arc. Pant certainly deserves credit for curbing his instincts and being calculative in terms of strokeplay en route to becoming only the second keeper-batter after Andy Flower to hit centuries in both innings of a Test.
