DHARAMSALA: It was the penultimate over of the day. Shoaib Bashir was sending down his 43rd over of the innings, 20th on the trot. He had four wickets to show and he nearly got his fifth, but Kuldeep Yadav was dropped by Ben Stokes in the slips.
Just as the over was about to finish, the ball went to James Anderson at gully. And the 41-year-old, seemingly frustrated, rolled the 39-over-old ball along the ground towards Bashir. Such was the lack of interest from Anderson that the ball barely crossed extra cover. Bashir had to walk and pick it up. That moment pretty much summed up the kind of day England had on Friday as India added 348 runs while losing seven wickets, finishing on 473/8.
"It was a hard day, a grafting day," England assistant coach Jeetan Patel would say later. "We thought the wicket might offer a bit more this morning and it didn't really — maybe the older ball got soft. But it was a hard day, the boys worked really, really hard and they got their rewards at the end of it. We've got to congratulate the boys for the way they stuck at it. You do the hard stuff time and time again, you eventually get your rewards," he added.
Irrespective of how they perform on the day, the England camp has been sticking to the mantra of focusing on the bright side of things. It is all about being "relentlessly positive", creating a no-negative environment while appreciating the efforts of the players. Friday, despite what Patel said, was one of those days where it seemed like England had run out of ideas while trying to stop the Indian batters.
Anderson barely bowled five overs on the trot. The veteran, who is a frontline seamer in a four-men attack, bowled only ten off the 90 overs of the day. In fact, when England took the second new ball, Anderson had already dismissed Shubman Gill. Yet, he bowled only two overs with the new ball and did not bowl in the third session; not even when Kuldeep and Jasprit Bumrah were batting.
Mark Wood, the other pacer, bowled 12, but even he did not bowl with the second new ball against Devdutt Padikkal and Sarfaraz Khan after the tea break. Instead, Ben Stokes persisted with spinners from both ends. Not that it was working. Both Padikkal and Sarfaraz had no trouble negotiating Tom Hartley and Bashir as they cruised towards their respective half-centuries. Even when Sarfaraz got out, it was against the run of play and so was the case of Dhruv Jurel, who tried to hit Bashir into the stands. The scorecard reflected England players' toils. Wood (5.9) and Anderson (4.2) went for over four runs per over (RPO), Bashir operated at 3.9 RPO and Hartley at 3.2.
But this doesn't mean England didn't have their moments. When Stokes took the ball, bowling for the first time in 251 days, and delivered a dream delivery to clean up Rohit Sharma, it seemed like he was onto something special. Things looked brighter when Gill got out to Anderson shortly after. However, that joy didn't last long. Stokes bowled one five-over spell and did not come back again in the third session despite the lower-order piling on runs. He was constantly trying different field settings, but it had no effect on the scoreboard.
Ask Patel how to put a positive spin on such a gruelling day, what kind of lead they would prefer, he said, "I don't know," before adding, "We'll have to get these two wickets first. Once we get them, we can work out where the game is at. By the end of tomorrow, we should work out what sort of position the game's in and where we can possibly take it."
Perhaps, the only positive they can take is how the pitch has played out and the way Indian batters have batted. Even then, against this Indian bowling attack, it would take a repeat of what happened in Hyderabad for England to come back into the game.
