Cracks in the wall: Cheteshwar Pujara is struggling and a change might be in order
Cheteshwar Pujara's feet hardly moved. He had no idea whether James Anderson was going to get the ball in or swing it away from him while he was batting in the first innings.
He knew the answer to that a few seconds later. It was a poke at a ball he would have left or defended had he been sure where his feet were.
It so happened, as it did over the last few Tests, that Pujara's feet, firmly planted against the seamers, just prodded at a delivery that was going away from him and paid the price for it. A thick edge flew to Jonny Bairstow at third slip who took a simple catch to remove Pujara.
The dismissal was a worry for Cheteshwar Pujara and India. The Saurashtra batsman has now gone 15 innings, with just four fifties to show against his name at an average of 27.8. The form decline is clear - Pujara is struggling, and calls have grown louder for him to be dropped.
Will Cheteshwar Pujara be rested despite the knock?
That question was framed in a rather more subtle way. To be brutally honest - will Cheteshwar Pujara be benched?
Despite skipper Virat Kohli's stiff backing of middle-order duo Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane, it's safe to say time's running out for both players who faltered in the first innings as well
Pujara's second innings will serve as a defining and deciding factor. At the time of writing, he made a painstaking 45 off 206 balls and took a good 35-odd deliveries to get off the mark. It was survival for Pujara as he nervously put his body and bat to anything that came to his pads and the stumps before he was eventually dismissed by Mark Wood.
A knock to put India in a respectable respectable position and force a draw (which at the moment seems to be a public favorite outcome) might just be the one to extend the rope that he has been given.
An argument can be made after Day 4's performances that both Cheteshwar Pujara and Rahane toughed it out, played a gritty innings and gave the nay-sayers a look at why they are valued despite the dip in form, but perhaps a change might not be a bad idea, considering their runs over the last 10 innings.
The bigger question though is who will replace the No.3 batsman in the Indian team? There might be a few combinations right off the bat - Mayank Agarwal returns as the opener alongside Rohit Sharma, followed by KL Rahul as next drop.
The second possibility is to insert Suryakumar Yadav into the position, but that would be a major gamble for India. No doubt the call will be bold, but perhaps it might be a much-needed move for the visitors.
The same can be said for Rahane, whose 146-ball-61 may have helped India strengthen their lead to 154 runs, but with a full day's play looming large, they will need to set a defendable target and much falls on a young Rishabh Pant and how he shepherds the tail.
Safe to say, he's not out of the woods yet, and for that matter, neither is Cheteshwar Pujara.