IND vs ENG 4th Test: Bashir bags 4 wickets, India restricted to 219 on Day 2

On the back of an admirable show by two young and relatively inexperienced finger spinnersmdashShoaib Bashir and Tom HartleymdashEngland sniff a significant and perhaps decisive first innings lead in the ongoing Ranchi Test After scoring a sizable 353 thanks to Joe Rootrsquos unbeaten 122 the visitors restricted India to 219 for 7 at stumps on Day TwoThough the unbeaten 42run stand between the two Uttar Pradesh boysmdashDhurv Jurel and Kuldeep Yadavmdashkept the English bowlers in check in the final hour of the dayrsquos play but with a lead of 134 runs in their favour on a challenging surface Ben Stokesrsquos side have certainly put the cat among the pigeons in the opposition campAlso Read Familiarity breeds confidence for Musheer KhanThe 20yearold Somerset offspinner Bashir with just 10 firstclass wickets to his name prior to this Test was the star of the day Playing only his second Test he bowled a marathon 31over spell 314834 from the Pavilion End and sent back four of the topfive Indian batters after James Anderson found Rohit Sharma 2 fishing outside his offstump at the beginningJoe RootWith his height and a flatter trajectory Bashir was getting a lot of purchase out of the muchtalked about cracks on the Ranchi pitch Compared to the Indian spinners he was bowling a bit faster and attacked the stumps much more Also Stokesrsquos proactive field placements helped his cause as runs dried out and quite a few Indian batters got out while playing down the wrong lineIn the postlunch session Bashir got the wickets of a set Shubman Gill 38 scratchy Rajat Patidar 17 and a counterattacking Ravindra Jadeja 12 to limit India to 131 for four at teaThe offspinner who replaced Rehan Ahmed in the XI for this Test in the next session fetched his team the prized scalp of an inform Yashasvi Jaiswal 73 with a ball that stayed low and hit the toeend of the bat before bouncing back onto the stumpsHartley impresses tooSoon England were all over India when leftarmer Hartley removed Sarfaraz Khan 14 and Ravichandran Ashwin 1 in quick succession The 24yearold was an excellent second fiddle 195472 to Bashir who himself bowled 32 overs out of 73 in the Indian innings so far Things could have been much worse for the home team but thanks to some rearguard effort by Jurel and Kuldeep they have somehow managed to hang on in this gameFor the most part of Indiarsquos innings the conditions were quite gloomy The light was not great and the floodlights were on for a major part of the entire last sessionldquoWersquove got ourselves into a nice position at the end of the first inningsrdquo Root the only centurion of this Test as of now said at the close of play ldquoSo wersquoll see how things progress throughout the game Obviously it looks like itrsquos going to keep deteriorating If we can get three early wickets tomorrow hopefully that puts us in a really strong position for the rest of the gamerdquoTalking specifically on the efforts of their spinners Root added ldquoThe way the guys operated today was brilliant I had a great view at first slip watching them operate For two young spinners to stand up and perform itrsquos really encouraging for English cricket and for us for the rest of this series and the rest of this Test matchrdquoAlso Read Excellent Lass for PBMM Gr 1Root hails lsquobrilliantrsquo BashirldquoBashirrsquos brilliantrdquo the former England skipper who bowled just a solitary over in the day despite having seven wickets in the series saidldquoHersquos a great young lad to have in the group Irsquove not seen much of him and I might not have known much about him before this series but hersquos got great character Hersquos got a great sense of humour He takes it all out to the field And hersquos clearly as you can see got huge amounts of ability and skill and a lot to offer especially on a surface like thisldquoIt was great to see him keep coming time and time again today asking really difficult questions of their order And again he should take a lot of confidence for the rest of this game and moving on as wellrdquoBrief scoresEngland 353 J Root 122 O Robinson 58 B Foakes 47 Z Crawley 42 R Jadeja 467 Akash Deep 383 M Siraj 278 v India 2197 Y Jaiswal 73 S Gill 38 D Jurel 30 S Bashir 484 T Hartley 247