England v India 2014 - 3rd Test, Day 2: Facts and figures
England started the day at 247/2, and, within the first hour, the overnight batsmen Gary Ballance and Ian Bell accelerated the innings to 301. In the absence of Ishant Sharma and on a flat wicket, although it got a bit better today, the visitors lacked the penetration to go through the English batting line-up. By drinks break, 54 runs were taken off 14 overs delivered by the pace trio of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Pankaj Singh and Mohammed Shami.
Finally, India got a breakthrough, courtesy Rohit Sharma, who continued the trend of part-timers picking up wickets in the series to break the 142-run third-wicket stand, just before lunch. At the time of writing this article, India, in reply to England’s 569/7, are 17/1 in 7 overs, having lost Shikhar Dhawan to James Anderson.
A short summary of day two in numbers:
1 – Post Lunch, MS Dhoni rotated his all three bowlers in this order – Mohammed Shami, Pankaj Singh and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, giving them one over spells that got rid of Joe Root. The trend continued till drinks.
3 – After crossing his 50, Bell, who has 21 tons and 41 fifties, moved to No. 3 in the list of batsmen with the most number of 50+ scores for England. He now has 62 scores of 50 or more equalling Michael Atherton’s tally. Graham Gooch(66), Geoffrey Boycott(64) are ahead of him. Alastair Cook is on 61.
10 – The wicket of Ballance was Rohit’s 10th international wicket and first in Tests. He became the 159th Indian to pick up a Test wicket.
11 – Ian Bell, during his innings on day 2, crossed 7000 Test runs for England: the 11th batsmen to do so.
15 – Test hundreds for Bell at home – the most by an Englishman. He now shares the record with Gooch and Kevin Pietersen.
21 – Runs conceded by Jadeja in his 32nd over of the innings. Moeen Ali scored a single off the first ball, and Bell smashed 6,4,6 and 4 in the next four before the point fielder stopped the run flow on the last delivery. Among Indian bowlers, Harbhajan Singh holds the unwanted record of having conceded the most number of runs in an over: 27 v Pakistan. Shahid Afridi scored four sixes followed by a couple and a single at Lahore, 2006.
50 – With the 50+ partnership between Ballance and Bell, all of England’s first 3 partnerships lasted for 50 or more runs. It is the 50th such instance in English Test history and the first since the match against Australia in August 2013.
80 – Jos Buttler’s 83-ball 85 is the second fastest 80+ score by a Test batsman on debut: strike rate of 102.40, the first being Shikhar Dhawan’s 174-ball 187 against Australia at 107. 47.
150 – Ballance’s 156 is the first 150+ score for an England No.3 since Ian Bell’s 159 against India at Trent Bridge, 2011.
150+ – This is Bell’s 5th 150+ score in Tests, 3rd against India.