Live Cricket Score India vs England 1st Test Day 3: India need early wickets to pin down England

1. Ind vs Eng 1st Test Day 3: India on top as Ashwin removes Root, Jennings Indian bowlers will look to get wickets early in the day, especially of England captain Joe Root's wicket, to keep the hosts under pressure. At the end of third day's play, England were 22 runs ahead.

2. On Day 3 of the first Test match, Virat Kohli and company need to take early wickets to keep the momentum in their favour which they had in the final session of Day 2. With the scorecard reading 148/6 after the departure of Hardik Pandya during the second session on Day 2, the situation looked extremely bleak for the Indians. The prospect of conceding a lead in excess of 100 looked likely and the visitors desperately needed a miracle to even minimise the damage that had been done. And the miracle came in the form of Virat Kohli century who added 92 runs for last 2 wickets, scoring 90% of the runs. To add salt to England miseries, Ashwin dismissed Alastair Cook to end the day with England at 9-1, 22 runs ahead of India. What England need to do on Day 3? England went to stumps on Day 2 at a score of 9/1, with Ravichandran Ashwin rattling Alastair Cook's off-stump off the last delivery of the day. The day, however, belongs to Virat Kohli, who fought against the odds to bring up his maiden century in England while almost single-handedly rescuing India from dire straits to help his side post a respectable total. With Cook disappointing yet again in the dying minutes of the day, England will have to count once again on Joe Root playing the anchor's role and building partnerships around him. More importantly, the home team will need their middle order to show more character in the second innings after the collapse in the first if they are to post a score in excess of 300, one that might just turn out to be a match- winning one for them. How Virat Kohli escaped the ghost of 2014? When Kohli last visited England in 2014, he scored just 134 runs in 10 innings and on Day 2 he scored 149 in one innings to show his class and somewhat he proved that he is world’s best batsmen in present time. During his 149-run knock, Kohli did struggle early on in the innings while facing the bowling of James Anderson and Sam Curran and was even dropped in the slip cordon by Dawid Malan while batting on 21. However, he did not let the bowlers get to his head and took on them with aplomb as he patiently scored a century. He kept losing wickets at the other end as none of the other batsmen managed to cross the 30-run mark. Towards the end of the innings, Ishant Sharma and Umesh Yadav played second fiddle and stood around at the crease for a long time, despite scoring just 5 and 1 respectively. To put things in perspective, 92 runs came off the last two wickets and Ishant and Umesh just scored 6 of those. Kohli managed to keep strike for the majority of the deliveries and hit the boundaries whenever he got a chance. Article Source BS