Images from Day 5 of the fourth Test between England and India, at The Oval, on Sunday.
Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja destroyed England’s middle order with splendid bowling to fashion an emphatic 157-run victory for India in the fourth Test, at The Oval in London, on Monday.
Chasing 368 for victory on Day 5, England were well-placed at 131 for 2 in the opening session, but lost six wickets after lunch with Bumrah and Jadeja wreaking havoc.
The hosts were eventually all out for 210, handing India a 2-1 lead in the five-match series.
The final Test, in Manchester, commences September 10.
Bumrah (22-9-27-2) was exceptional with his in-swinging balls and teasing yorkers while Jadeja (30-11-50-2) exploited the rough patches on the track to tilt the game India's way.
England lost six wickets for 62 runs in the second session and were all out post-tea.
Bumrah dismissed Ollie Pope (2) and Jonny Bairstow (0), while Jadeja saw the back of Haseeb Hameed (63) and Moeen Ali (0).
Shardul Thakur (8-1-22-2) too played a leading hand in the victory, taking the key wicket of rival skipper Joe Root ((36 off 78 balls) and Umesh Yadav (18.2-2-60-3) completed the formalities with the second new ball, dismissing Chris Woakes (18), Craig Overton (10) and James Anderson (2).
Morning session:
England opener Haseeb Hameed adopted an ultra-defensive approach in the first session to guide England to 131 for 2 at lunch, in pursuit of a tough target of 368.
Hameed (batting on 62) added only 19 runs to his overnight score, as England lost Rory Burns (50) and Dawid Malan (5) during the session, in which they added just 54 runs to their total of 77 without loss on Day 4.
A maximum of 63 overs are left in the game and England need to score 237 runs. How they do it primarily depends on skipper Joe Root’s batting in the next two sessions. He was unbeaten on 8 at the break.
Ravindra Jadeja (0-21) is getting some turn and England will have a tough time scoring the required runs, at a rate of 3.76 per over.
The visitors are certainly in the driver's seat, having already snared two wickets and Hameed's defensive approach.
Had Mohammed Siraj not dropped an easy catch from the opener, when he was on 56, at mid-on, off the bowling of Jadeja, India would have been well-placed.
Shardul Thakur (1-15), who was disappointing in the first innings, provided the breakthrough in the 41st over after a partnership of 100 runs between Burns and Malan, the first against India in the fourth innings in 58 years.
Thakur bowled one fuller and it moved a shade away, taking the outside edge of the Burns's bat as he squared up.
Malan was looking solid in defence till Hameed misjudged a single, tapping a Jadeja delivery to short cover, where substitute fielder Mayank Agarwal picked and threw in one action to wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant, who whipped off the bails. Malan was short of his ground, much to the joy of the Indians.
Hameed, who is nicknamed Baby Boycs after Geoffrey Boycott for his stodgy batting, was not even ready to dispatch the loose half volleys to the boundary, as only six fours were hit by him so far.
It all depends on how long Root waits before deciding to down shutters or go for the target, which will also help India to make some decisive inroads.
Post-Lunch session
The complexion of the match completed changed after lunch as pacer Jasprit Bumrah and spinner Ravindra Jadeja wreaked havoc with four dismissals, reducing England to 193 for 8 at tea.
England still needed 175 runs for an improbable victory, with only two wickets left and 37.5 overs to play in the final session.
Victory in the Test would give India a 2-1 lead and an unprecedented second Test victory in an away series against England after a gap of 35 years.
Bumrah (2-24) and Jadeja (2-50) rocked England with such ferocity that a batsman of Joe Root's (36) stature looked dumbfounded at the other end with the kind of distress his fellow-batsmen were in.
Perhaps, that was the reason why India's man-of-the-moment Shardul Thakur's (2-22) off-cutter was dragged back onto the stumps by Root, signalling the end of English resistance.
The slide started in the post-lunch session when Jadeja answered all the pro-Ashwin backers on his and Virat Kohli's behalf. He hit the rough created outside the left-hander's off-stump as his skipper had assessed at the toss.
Jadeja made Haseeb Hameed (63) pay for his ultra-defensive tactics with a classic left-arm spinner's dismissal.
Using the rough outside the leg-stump of the right-hander, he landed one on the spot as the opener prodded forward for a defensive stroke but the ball turned enough to evade the bat and hit the top of the off-stump.
Then it was Bumrah's turn to unleash his sharp incoming reverse swinging deliveries with a lethal mix of yorkers for Ollie Pope (2) and Jonny Bairstow (0), who couldn't prevent their defence from being breached.
Pope got one that came in sharply at a brisk pace which also ensured the quickest 100th Test wicket for India's most prolific all-format fast bowler in the last decade. But the ball that got Bairstow was even special as it would have made someone like Waqar Younis proud.
It moved in the air and dipped at the right time to york Bairstow and leave England in tatters.
In that same over, Bumrah bowled another menacing yorker that Root just about managed to dig out.
The legendary Shane Warne termed it as best fast bowling spell during the English summer and that too on a flat deck.
"Take a bow Jaspritbumrah9! That spell of 6.3.6.2 was outstanding and the spell of the summer so far. A class above any other fast bowler in this test match on a flat wicket ! Outstanding," Warne tweeted.
If that was not enough, Moeen Ali became a "walking wicket" as he trapped himself into the set plan with Jadeja again landing on the rough outside the left-hander's off-stump.
The extra bounce meant that it hit the shoulder of he blade and Suryakumar Yadav, substituting for Cheteshwar Pujara at short leg, took an easy catch.
From 141 for 2, it was 147 for six in a space of six overs. England in that hour after lunch lost four wickets for 19 runs in 14 overs.
