In what could be termed an emphatic Test victory, India thrashed England by 317 runs to win the second Test on Day 4 at the MA Chidambaram Stadium on Tuesday. The visitors failed in their chase of 482 runs set by India in the second innings, as they crumbled for 164 runs with Axar Patel having scalped 5 wickets, Ravichandran Ashwin and Kuldeep Yadav taking 3 and 2 wickets respectively. For England, Moeen Ali slammed 43 off 18 balls while Joe Root (c), Daniel Lawrence, Rory Burns and Ollie Pope scored 33, 26, 25 and 12 runs each. On the contrary for India, Ravichandran Ashwin hogged the limelight for his outstanding contribution with the bat and ball, he slammed 106 runs (2nd innings) and even scalped 5 wickets (1st innings). While skipper Kohli (c) too added a valuable 62 runs to power India to 286 runs in the second innings. In the 1st innings for India, ‘Hitman’ Rohit Sharma’s 161 blitzkrieg followed by Rahane’s 67, Rishabh Pant’s 58 gave India an initial lead of 329 runs.
Superb character and fighting spirit on display.🙌 Well done boys. The focus is now on the next one. 🇮🇳💪 pic.twitter.com/TEVceiOhYM
— Virat Kohli (@imVkohli) February 16, 2021
“It was a bit strange in the first game to be playing at home with empty stands. We were pretty flat on the first two days over there to be pretty honest, myself included, didn’t pick up energy on the field. But from the second innings onwards in the first game, we picked up and were on the money in terms of our body language. The crowds make a big difference, this game was an example of the grit and determination this side shows and the crowd is a big part of that. The toss wouldn’t have mattered much in this game to be honest, because if you looked at our second innings, we got 300 as well. It wasn’t unfair if the toss went either way. Both teams should be in the game from the first session onwards, whether it is on spinning to seaming tracks, and that exactly was the case in this game,” Indian skipper Virat Kohli said post-match.
“Credit to India, they outplayed us in all three departments. It has been an education for us, you could come up with conditions like these and we have to learn from this and find a way to score runs. We need to learn to build pressure and bowl six balls at one batsman. On day one we could have been a bit tighter, squeeze the game a bit more and make it harder for them to score. From day two it was a very difficult wicket to bat on. But we have got to be smarter about how we’re building an innings. We are 1-1 and we are excited about the next two games given the way we played in the first game,” England skipper Joe Root said.
India and England will clash again in the third Test match that begins from February 24 to be played at Ahmedabad in Gujarat.
