Lord's cricket ground is one of the famous cricket grounds of the world with its habit to be more productive for the bowlers. Overcast conditions are a blessing for swing bowlers and the team who takes early advantage of these conditions is likely to have an upper hand over the other team. England bowlers showed exactly how to play these conditions and handed team India a defeat which they might not have expected. India has been doing particularly well in Test matches but this match was a total opposite for them as they struggled in all departments especially the batting department which used to be there strong bid.
Problems for Team India
India has been struggling in this series with their batting performance, they did put up a fight in the first test and it was expected that they will come with an even better performance but all vent in vain when they were bundled out for only 107 runs in their first innings. Their batting performance was so poor that no batsman crossed the 30 run mark with Ravichandran Ashwin being the top scorer for the team in the first innings.
Things were miserable when England piled up huge first innings lead of 289 runs with an outstanding knock from Chris Woakes and Jonny Bairstow. India could do absolutely nothing to put up a fight as they had already allowed England to reach to a massive score of 396/7 with Woakes unbeaten on 137 runs. Things went worse when the captain of India didn't look fully fit as a result the whole team was bundled out for only 130 runs in the second innings which handed away an easy victory to England.
Star performers for England
England looked absolutely determined to sweep through the batting line-up of India in the first innings and that's exactly what they did. With the likes of James Anderson, Chris Woakes, and Chris Broad the job of taking wickets and finishing the match in 4 days became easier. James Anderson has been around for a lot of time for England and has a wonderful record against India. Anderson still has a good degree of swing left in him as he completely ran through the Indian top order by taking 5 wicket-haul in the first innings and 4 wickets in the second innings.
England was also struggling a bit in their first innings with the bat until Chris Woakes and Jonny Bairstow studied the ship. Chris Woakes played a temperamental inning and chose his shots wisely to take the game away from the visitors. Chris Woakes didn't only bat well, he also managed to take key wickets of Indian batsmen which included the wicket of Virat Kohli. England batted extremely well to declare at 396/7 in their first innings which India couldn't score in their two innings.
Conditions did favor English bowlers but only when they were able to hit the right areas and the marks where they had planned it. The credit goes to the England bowlers for being consistent in their line and length as they caused problems for the Indian batsmen who fell prey to some great swing bowling. India, on the other hand, will take a lot from this test, this defeat must have hit them badly but it is time for them to stand up again correct the areas that need to improve. They will need to make some changes in the batting line up and they will need to start showing some respect to the good balls and hit the bad ones.
Hoping for a better match on Friday, let me know if you expect some changes in the Indian squad.
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