Honours even on day for bowlers

The second day of the first Test of the series between England and India at Lord’s began as the first one had ended – bizarrely. After last night’s farce of the English batsmen being offered the light twice, only to be brought back on again shortly after taking it each time, the drainage system at Lord’s performed a miracle to allow any play at all today. The morning session had been washed out, but by the time the afternoon session was scheduled to start, the ground was fit to play on. There would be few, if any, signs of rain earlier that day when the players were on the field.

The Indians came out to try and capitalise on the two late breakthroughs from day one, but not even they could have imagined how well they would do. Nightwatchman Ryan Sidebottom (1) became the first man to return to the pavilion on day two, bowled playing down the wrong line to a ball from the impressive RP Singh. This precipitated a collapse of epic proportions.

During the rained off morning session, Sky filled time by showing footage of England vs. India from 1996, and such was the severity of England’s collapse that it was reminiscent of England’s fragile batting of the previous decade. England lost all six remaining wickets in the afternoon for just 30 runs. Over half of those were made by Ian Bell, who briefly counter attacked.

Bell pulled Sreesanth for six, but soon started losing partners. Pietersen, who had tried to walk a couple of balls earlier, but turned back when the third umpire proved the ball didn’t carry to Dhoni, edged Zaheer Khan behind for 37. Matt Prior (1) followed the next over, lbw to one that was possibly a bit high from Sreesanth. Tremlett and Panesar were also lbw to Sreesanth, with neither troubling the scorers. Eventually, Bell (20) was the last man out, inside edging a full pitched Zaheer delivery onto his pads and seeing the ball ricochet onto the stumps.

England were all out for 298, disappointing since they were 252-2 at one point. Credit has to be given to the Indian seamers, though. They recovered from a nightmare first hour of the match to scythe through England’s middle order. With a chance to push the tourists into a dominant position, Dinesh Karthik and Wassim Jaffer opened the Indian innings. Sidebottom and Anderson kept it tight, however, and claimed wickets as the pressure built. Sidebottom trapped Karthik lbw for 5 and Anderson produced a beauty to force the Indian captain Rahul Dravid to edge to wicketkeeper Prior having score 2.

Sachin Tendulkar and Jaffer consolidated, though, putting on 79 for the third wicket. Both players looked in good touch, despite Jaffer needing a let off from Prior to survive the third over of the innings. Anderson broke the partnership, trapping Tendulkar lbw for 37. And Jaffer didn’t last long past his fifty, looping a return catch to debutant Chris Tremlett, who impressed on his first foray into Test cricket.

Sourav Ganguly (25*) and RP Singh (5*) saw the tourists through to the close without any more losses, but still 153 runs behind. With three days left, this game is anyone’s for the taking.

England 298
Andrew Strauss 96, Michael Vaughan 79
Sreesanth 3-67, RP Singh 2-58

India 145/4
Wasim Jaffer 58, Sachin Tendulkar 37
James Anderson 2-26, Chris Tremlett 1-29