Pant came to the crease with India in a hole but saw no reason to change his style, and instead briefly bent the game to his will
At the start of the 30th over of India’s first innings Jofra Archer went round the wicket to Rishabh Pant, mixing things up for his first go at India’s left-handed wicketkeeper-batsman. But he got his line wrong, sending his first delivery across the 23-year-old – who got the slightest of contacts to send it down the leg-side for four – and then overcorrecting, sending his next wide and straight, and Pant stretched to club that one away for four more. A spell was broken, and suddenly runs gushed off the bat like steam from a pressure cooker; next over Cheteshwar Pujara hit Dom Bess to long-off for successive boundaries, the over after that Pant topped that with a pair of sixes off Jack Leach, the start of a brutal campaign of intimidation against England’s left-arm spinner that must have left the bowler unsure whether he needed a change of angle or a restraining order.
That Leach was the man underneath the ball when Pant, having twice scored sixes off Leach himself when clearing a fielder by a matter of inches, finally made a significant misjudgment, or that with India’s most destructive batsman gone he rowed his economy rate back from 9.63 to a vaguely respectable 5.53, will provide England’s senior spinner with only slight succour. In truth his self-esteem was just collateral damage as Pant reshaped the game temporarily to his will, wrestling it out of England’s grasp and depositing it 18 rows back in the top tier of the stands.
Related: Dom Bess delighted by 'special dismissal' of India's Virat Kohli
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