Widening cracks bode well for England

This was the first ball of the game that took a piece of the pitch after landing. The ball hit the edge of one of the cracks on a good length, right in front of the batsman. The cracks running right through the 22 yards have opened up a little from the first day and this ball was a sign of the edges crumbling a little. That puts England in a commanding position.

The thing with reverse swing is that it allows you to both take wickets and, if needed, stop the flow of runs. India tried that with Ben Stokes, with both seamers bowling from around the wicket. India had set a 7-2 off-side field and bowled an 8-10th-stump line to him, and it not only stemmed the flow of runs but also produced two outside edges. As a batsman, Stokes had two options - he could either leave everything alone or walk across to get closer and drag it towards the leg side. Now, you might ask why the same does not apply to right-handed batsmen. The reason is that when the ball is reversing, it tends to tail back in more as compared to leaving the right-hander, and that makes it tougher to set an off-side trap.

The ball has reverse swung quite appreciably in this game, but we have not seen many attempts from the bowlers to bowl yorkers. During the last series, Zaheer Khan told me that you need either the extra pace or some reverse swing to attempt hitting the blockhole. The Indian fast bowlers were fortunate enough to have both in this innings - Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav are reasonably quick in the air and both were extracting considerable reverse swing. So it was slightly surprising that they did not attempt more yorkers.

Against the pacers, Stokes scored most of his runs through the leg side. Whenever India's seamers bowled outside off, they were able to keep him quiet. So, was there a case for bowling more in that channel outside off and also trying to go over the wicket more to use the natural angle taking the ball away from him? India's fast bowlers did not go over the wicket even once to him.

There's been a lot of talk about Gautam Gambhir's new stance and the challenges it is likely to pose. With the new, very open stance, a couple of things that Gambhir must be careful about are his judgment of where his off stump is and avoiding the temptation to play booming drives to full balls outside off. Thus far, Gambhir has shown both the patience and the judgment - he has left balls in the fifth-stump channel and allowed the full balls to come to him instead of going towards them.