India v/s England: Now, spinners turn it with bat

In the long history of Indian cricket, there have been constant talk of spin domination but rarely has the topic of discussion centred around their batting. History has only witnessed spin trio or spin quartet, but the three sessions post tea on Day Two saw the emergence of three spin all-rounders that has been dominating the discussions now.

On Monday, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Jayant Yadav together contributed 217 runs in the India's first innings total of 417 to help their team gain a decisive 134-run lead. And most of these runs came after losing the six frontline batsmen including skipper Virat Kohli with the total on 204.

All the three Indian spinners completed their half centuries. Jadeja (90) would be cursing himself for missing his first Test hundred here on Monday. But Ashwin's 72 and Jayant's 55 were equally flawless and not for a second during the entire day's play did any of the English bowlers trouble the three. This was in sharp contrast to Day One when all these three India spinners did make life difficult for the English batsmen to scalp five in first knock.

The last session of the Day 3 was no different as the same spin trio placed India within distance of making it 2-0 in the five-Test series.

Ashwin and Jayant picked up four wickets between them in the final session to reduce England to 78/4, still trailing by 56.

Alastair Cook, who opened the innings with Joe Root due to the finger injury of regular opener Haseeb Hameed, was never allowed to settle in by the Indian spinners. Though he survived two loud LBW shouts, DRS saving him on both occasions, during his short innings of 12, he had no answer to Ashwin's straighter one that went through the gap between bat and pad.

Moeen Ali was Ashwin's next victim as he was deceived by flight and only managed to chip it to mid-on. Jayant made sure that he had the prized wicket of first innings star Jonny Bairstow, caught behind brilliantly by Parthiv Patel, leaving England staring at a big defeat.

The change of pitch behaviour was so sharp in just a few minutes. From the time the England spinners were bowling till tea, the ball started turning, lifting or keeping low occasionally when delivered by the Indians.

India ended the day on a high when Ashwin trapped the dangerous Ben Stokes leg before with the decision coming in his favour only after a review.

Root manoeuvred his way to 36 not out at the close with night-watchman Gareth Batty.

Earlier in the day, 146 runs were added by India on the pitch that was offering absolutely no assistance to English spinners. The pacemen, though, did apply themselves to get that elusive breakthrough. The pitch seemed to offer nothing to anyone. The only success came when Ashwin sliced a drive off Stokes, which was held by Jos Buttler at point.

And, that was all for quite some time as Jayant once again imposed himself at No. 9 batting position. India were in no hurry as Jadeja and Jayant enjoyed their time under the sun. It was only after Jadeja decided that he had had enough of this boredom and started jumping out of his crease to hit boundaries.

Twice he jumped over to the off-side just as the bowler let go of the ball so that he could drive past mid-on. Two more flashing cut shot made it 16 off a Chris Woakes over. Cook went back to his most trusted spinner Adil Rashid but Jadeja, by this time, was not ready to slow down to reach his first three figure mark in Test cricket. He was finally caught by Chris Woakes inside boundary in his continuance of hitting quick boundaries.