It will be interesting to see Rashid on a turning wicket, he bowled well today, on a pitch that dident really help the spinners.

My bets still on a draw

Looks like we have gone from a India vs Pakistan bickering this morning to a Pakistan bashing article. I was going to comment this morning but both Pak and India fans were at it in particular dafty whoever his is.. Lefty seemed like you only want to see certain sides and you are no better than Pak fans.
Real shame English fans like myself feel uncomfortable and bored coming here because of Pak ind politics.

Facty,

3Lions - no Pakistan bashing, I'm trying to keep this to the game. Its seems to be going ok.

Just a few tail ends from the previous thread but they seem to have gone too.

You just let someone above call I assume a Pak fan a twrt, but have it let go because it's an Indian sating to Pak so that makes it ok and not troll? I have occasionally visited this site before joining and see you and few Indians and Pak fans as trolls I am afraid. I'm sure most other England fans already know that

3Lions - I have one match ban enabled. The person who he is insulting can complain about that. I'm just going to stop anyone ruining a thread. As you can see most have moved on.

If, it continues and starts to ruin the thread, it will be deleted.

but by all means please continue posting in your thread

I honestly think we have played quite poorly on such a flat deck. We should be scoring a lot faster than what we have on day3. England's spinners are equivalent to part timers and we have allowed to build pressure on us.

The only win possible is we collapse now and England force a result here, otherwise a draw looks like the only result. Given this is the case now, kohli and rahane should look to score a big 100 and aim to improve their average. Even if this means batting whole day tomorrow and on day 5 as well.

Inhindsight looks like Indian bowlers did very well to create those many chances, albeit poor fielding.

It's a shame you had to make a new thread. I looked back at the comments and was thinking okay very weird lol. Anyways this test is looking extremely likely to be a draw. I'll probably wake up about 9ish tomorrow and watch the last few hours.

Pitch misbehaving now..two big, big wickets in the first hour for England. Definitely on top now.

A few edges gone astray but it was poor of India to concede a lead. A draw looming barring a shocking India collapse tomorrow.

I can't see 20 wickets falling in the last 2 days here.

Draw all day long

Hameed looks a player doesn't he. For a teenager to display this kind of temperament in his debut test in the subcontinent is a huge credit. The spinners obviously haven't bowled the right lines to him and it is a relatively flat wicket but it has still been an impressive showing from the lad.

Agree Kav, lads only 19 too. He does have a bright future ahead of him

Impressed with England overall. They have toyed with our bowling, and they could well have 2 more centurions tomorrow.england have played very positive so far. In contrast, we had gambhir and Vijay blocking and blocking all the way.

I don't understand why we keep going back at gambhir . He is 35, looked completely out of shape in England, and with his new stance will be a walking wicket. We really ought to start investing younger players. Draw is probably the more likely result in this pitch, but England will be the happier team

I'm hoping something interesting happens on the final day which means there is a chance of there being a winner. Extremely unlikely though!

Around 40 overs remaining. 290 odd runs to chase or 9 wickets to fall.

Draw

Making this easier for England by throwing away wickets. 3 down now and you can bet England will bowl all the allocated overs now. Pujara also not reviewing his lbw which pitched a mile outside leg was a shocker. We've been on the backfoot in this test since Kohli lost the toss.

Also how does an aging 36 year old Gambhir walk into this side when we've got the likes of KL Rahul sitting on the sideline. Even Dhawan would be a better option than Gambhir.

Faaaack me Rahane goes as well. This is becoming a scare now.

49 overs and these idiots can't even bat this out safely without making a hash of it. Absolutely schoolboy stuff.

It's fair to say this was a flat pitch and although the ball turned, it was very easily readable by batsmen.

Mishra and gambhir should be dropped in the next match. Rahane has had a shocker of a match on very good batting wicket.

Agreed Viru, to even give England a sniff was pretty poor from our batsmen - thankfully our captain has a few more brain cells than the other batsmen. Pujara has to stop being Mr. Nice for a start as I'm sure Kumble would have pointed out to him because his delivery pitched about half a foot outside leg. Rahane was uncharacteristic and Saha got out playing a ridiculous shot.

Their spinners also outbowled ours comfortably which I find amazing. Never having bowled at Rajkot in a Test may have something to do with that. Lets hope it changes in Visakhapatnam. England definitely won the physcological battle in that game though - hope we win the toss this time also.

Although regarding the above, it's not as if Moeen, Rashid and Ansari bowl on wickets like these regularly so there was zero excuse from Ashwin and Jadeja - both of whom were actually more effective with the bat. A relatively average test all round for all our players in hindsight.

I think more than the spinners bowling well, I think our batsmen gave it away. On day 3 we had a whole session where we only scored 66. I wouldn't read too much on our final innings collapse.

Next test will be a better wicket for sure. That will be a bigger test for both teams really.

The onus, as the number 1 test side playing at home, is on us. We should be going for a win, nothing less.