 "Jaiswal 200 to Bumrah 150: 10 key takeaways from India vs England 2nd Test")
India managed to get past England at Vizag by 106 runs to draw the five-match series level at 1-1 after two encounters. Jasprit Bumrah and Yashasvi Jaiswal were the two key figures in India's victory over an England side that refused to give up till the very end, even as they were dominated every day of the Test by Rohit Sharma led India.
Apart from Jaiswl and Bumrah, Zak Crawley, James Anderson and Shubman Gill also contributed immensely to make it a great red-ball drama that kept the audiences hooked on all four days.
Here are the top 10 key takeaways from the game.
Jaiswal, playing only in his sixth Test, became the third youngest Indian to hit a double century in the longest format of the game. He remained behind Vinod Kambli and Sunil Gavaskar in an elite list that also includes Nawab Pataudi. It was only thanks to Jaiswal's double ton that India posted 396 in the first innings, as the second-best scorer for India in that innings was Shubman Gill, who scored 35 runs.
More From This Section
Jasprit Bumrah has shown that he is not someone who can be passed off as a limited-overs specialist in Indian conditions. He is one of those rare pacers who have excelled in India and are almost a master of reverse swing with the old SG ball. The 30-year-old now has 29 wickets in 6 Tests in India at an average of 13 and a strike rate of 30.
Bumrah took 6/45, his best bowling figures at home, to reach 150 Test wickets in only his 34th game. He became the fastest Indian pacer and second fastest in Asia, behind Pakistan's Waqar Younis, to reach the coveted milestone.
The Gujarat bowler was not only responsible for stopping England from posting a big first innings total, but in the second innings too, his timely dismissals of well-set batters Jonny Bairstow and Ben Foakes led to India not facing many difficulties on its way to victory.
Shubman Gill ended the draught of 12 Test innings by scoring his first fifty-plus score and then made it even special by converting it into a hundred in the second innings to take India to 255 when every other batter struggled against the English bowlers.
Gill was lucky to have three chances in the second innings, with two DRS calls going in his favour and a catch being dropped by Root in the slip. But he utilised those chances and reached his third Test hundred.
James Anderson, at 41, showed that age is just a number as the Lancashire bowler picked five wickets in the match and contributed well with the new and the old ball. Especially on the morning of the third day, Anderson showed his skills with the new ball and got both Indian openers Jaiswal and Rohit Sharma with peach out-swingers.
He now has 695 wickets in 184 Tests and would eye the last three Tests on this tour to go past the magical number of 700 Test wickets before turning 42.
Ben Stokes' brilliant captaincy
Ben Stokes might not have contributed much with the bat, but he was brilliant with his field changes and bowling rotation as a captain. When nothing was happening in the game, he would just make a field change or pull in a brilliant dive in the outfield to lift the whole team.
Stokes' catch to get Shreyas Iyer out in the second innings was one such moment which lifted the English team. When Gill and Axar Patel put together 81 for the fifth wicket, he forced Gill to bring out a reverse sweep just after his hundred and caught him in the trap.
Crawley is no crawler at Vizag
Zak Crawley, in an interview after his first innings score of 76, was asked why he played an attacking shot even after getting a four off that over already; his reply was, "If I don't play that way, I go back to being the old batter who averaged 29."
This was his approach in the entire game, as even in the second innings, the 26-year-old threatened to chase down 399 to win the match. Crawley smashed 73 in the second innings, too, but a very unfortunate call did not go in his favour, and he got out to open the doors for India.
Rohit failing as batter
Indian skipper Rohit's failure with the bat in both innings was a major setback for the Indian team. In the first innings, he was out trying to be all defensive and in the second, while trying to show 'intent' and set the 'template'. In his last eight innings, Rohit has not been able to convert his starts into a big innings, and he must lead by example if India are to get ahead in the series.
India's bowling combinations
The Indian bowling combination was not up to the mark for the Test as Mukesh Kumar was not at all impressive before picking his first wicket of England number 10 Shoaib Bashir in the second innings.
At a time when the opposition was playing with four spinners in the side, India could have gone with off-spinner Washington Sundar, who could have provided a better option with the ball against English left-handers and would have been a great middle-order batting option as well.
England's key batters fail
The shot that Joe Root played to get out in the second innings was not something that anyone in the English dressing room would have been proud of. Playing an off-spinner down the ground and failing to connect is not the Root with 11,000 Test runs that people know. Jonny Bairstow has got two starts in all four innings and has not been able to convert any of them. Ben Duckett threw away two starts in this match as well.
Ollie Pope got out to a ripper in the first innings and was unlucky to an extent to get caught brilliantly by Rohit in the slip in the second. But apart from him, even skipper Stokes threw his wicket away by lazy running in the second innings. In the first innings, he could not convert the 47 to a big score and that hurt the English side eventually. Had these players contributed well and not thrown away their wickets, it might have been a different result today.
Hartley showing heart again
The English left-arm spinner, who was the game-changer in the Hyderabad Test, played well in the Vizag as well, picking four wickets in the second innings to get India all out for 255.
He added 55 with the bat for the eighth wicket with Ben Foakes and, for a time, threatened India before running out of partners and eventually getting out for his best score of 36 runs. 57 runs with the bat and five wickets with the ball was enough to see that Hartley has a big heart to bowl and bat in difficult situations for his team.