India are the Lords of the Lord's
It is a famous win for Team India beating England in England and that too at the Lord’s. It has been a comedy of errors in the afternoon session by England batting that gave India the much-deserved win.
Remember Ishant Sharma being hit by James Faulkner a few months back during the India-Australia ODI series. Ishant took quite a beating that made him look like a ‘culprit’ for no real fault of his. He was made to sit out of the playing XI after that match.
But this is the day when all are praising him for a famous win that was made possible all due his bowling alone. He has got career best figures of seven wickets and conceding 74 runs. Sharma was all over the England batsmen and they could hardly do anything to keep him away.
For his efforts, he was the apt candidate for the man of the match award.
The Ishant Sharma show began after the lunch interval, or in fact, let’s say at the stroke of lunch. Moeen Ali was the last wicket to fall to a bouncer caught easily by Pujara.
This ended a 101-run stand by Ali and Joe Root.
When play started after lunch, Matt Prior and Root played some lovely shots to score 10 runs each in the first two overs. Four fours were hit in those 20 runs. England were looking to take the game away from India. The strategy for the English batsmen was to bowl them short balls.
Matt Prior was the first batsman to be dismissed by Ishant Sharma to a short ball. Runs were leaking early on and it looked as if England would run away with the match that at one stage looked to be in firm grip of India. However, Dhoni continued with the plan in spite of conceding some runs.
After the wicket of Prior it did not take too much time for the batting to collapse. Ben Stokes and Joe Root were dismissed in the same over. All of these three wickets were taken off short balls. Stokes was out for a duck – his third duck on the trot.
Root tried to play a short ball over the boundary and literally gave away his wicket in a gift. He scored 66 runs off 146 balls. As long as he was at the crease, it looked like England would at least save the Test. But wickets kept falling around from both ends and it was impossible to stop the slide.
The end of the English innings was a comical one when Ravindra Jadeja ran out James Anderson when there was misunderstanding between him and Liam Plunkett. The innings got over at 223 runs giving India a win by 95 runs.