On the second morning, Josh Tongue finally broke a mammoth stand between the Indian captain Shubman Gill and Ravindra Jadeja, but a lunch of 419 for six left the tourists responsible for the second Rothesay test.
Gill was impenetrable when he did not achieve a new career best number of 168. The second time in so many weeks he collected his own milestone, but a sharp bouncer from the Tongue offered a break by releasing Jadeja for 89.
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He shoveled behind the sixth Wicket stand to 203, a partnership in which Ben Stokes’ team chased the game back after using the opposition.
The stand between Gill and Jadeja stood at 99 overnight and transformed him into a hundred discount of the first ball of the morning.
Stokes was the man who delivered it and had a task with the second new ball to force an early breakthrough for his side. But neither he nor Chris Woakes, England’s best bowler on the first day, could create a chance on the first day on a surface that played straight and true from minute.
India was not in the mood to say goodbye to the view of soft runs, and Jadeja made it on his ninth fifty against England and Gill transformed his day with a goal from 114 into a first 150 in the test cricket.
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A constant trickle of borders gave the rating rate a bump. Jadeja hit four of Stokes and Gill in a row, who liked Brydon Carse after entering the fight. With a wafer thin edge of the error for the bowl, CARSE found hard when he pulled too crowded and around the corner when he was briefly dug.
England kept an eye on Jadeja’s footwork, apparently concerned that he had later created another rough for his own off-spin in the game, but there was no formal intervention by the referees.
Her own spinner, Shoaib Bashir, did not find much joy and found two six in one over. Jadeja took a few steps on the field and cleaned up the rope, with Gill launched in a slog-tweep that brought up the 200 level.
Just when it looked as if England had no one anywhere, the tongue found just enough jump to obtain the mistake.
The tongue made life for the new man Washington Sundar uncomfortable in the last before lunch, but 109 runs for a Wicket meant that the session belonged to India.