With first Test against England in the balance the tourists revealed another of their plentiful flaws
The day started with drama and tension and later, for a while, they returned. But the period in between was in its own way equally intriguing, a phase that exposed in the tourists a deficiency not of quality, but of spirit. This turns out to be a team whose shoulders suffer from such severe premature drooping someone should invent some kind of blue pill to deal with it.
They started with spirits high and performance levels to match, Jasprit Bumrah from the Kirkstall Lane End and Mohammed Siraj coming up the hill from the other, lines and lengths unerring. Ben Duckett hit the third ball for four, after which seven overs passed before the next boundary.
Bumrah, as he does, produced a couple of absurd deliveries Duckett survived by little more than luck. His four-over spell brought eight runs, Siraj started with five overs that brought 13. In the first 10 overs Duckett faced 35 deliveries and scored six runs. The game was in the balance and teetering, mulling over which direction to fall.
It was India who toppled. Ten overs later, England had more than doubled the pace of their scoring, adding 58, and those shoulders had sagged. Shardul Thakur, a 33-year-old whose Test career runs to 12 games in seven years and whose performances are often as inconsistent as his selection, was brought on. Three overs and 17 runs later and having bowled with no consistency or apparent plan, he was hauled off again.
