England will lock horns with India in the fourth Test starting July 23.
The ongoing ENG vs IND Test series is nothing less than a roller coaster. Daddy hundreds, five-wicket hauls, words being exchanged, and a Dukes ball controversy. Having said that, we are just three matches into the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy. England will host India in the fourth Test in Manchester, and the countdown has already begun. The visitors haven’t managed a single victory at the venue in their history of Test cricket. But Shubman Gill & Co. would not be very concerned about that record. The Indians had a similar kind of record against them, going into the second Test at Edgbaston. But what followed was an excruciating five days of cricket.
Before the Edgbaston Test match, Henry Goss, an employee at Hellful Leather Cricket, got a chance to work on Shubman Gill’s bat. Goss, who works specifically in the repairs section of the company, expressed his gratitude and explained the process of how his team worked on the Indian skipper’s bat. Players no longer carry bat-repair material with them, like the ones who used to do it before. Players like Sachin Tendulkar were very fond of carrying tapes and sandpaper with them, to repair their bats as and when needed. Gone are those days. Goss explained the process of how they worked on Gill’s bat.
The Indian skipper has been leading from the front in the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy. Apart from the third Test in which he failed to score big, the 25-year-old has not let the burden of captaincy affect his batting. He scored a plethora of runs in the first two Tests, with two hundreds and one double-century. After his dismissal in the second innings of the third Test, a lot has been said about Gill in terms of his batting on pitches which offer some assistance to the bowlers. However, the pitch at Old Trafford is known to be on the slower side, and it will be important for the Indian skipper to make the most of his form.
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But that is not the only problem India have to deal with. Nitish Kumar Reddy has been ruled out of the series. To make matters worse, Arshdeep Singh was also ruled out of the fourth Test due to an injury. Akash Deep is doubtful for the Manchester Test, citing reasons for a groin strain. The visitors will have to work their way around injuries to bounce back in the series. They may think of including Kuldeep Yadav in the mix. Moreover, Prasidh Krishna will have to make sure that he takes responsibility and controls the run-flow from one end. This might be another Test where Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj might have to do the heavy lifting.
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