Watch: Tom Hartley castles Ravichandran Ashwin for a duck in his 100th Test

England’s Tom Hartley has earned another breakthrough for the visitors through the wicket of Ravindra Jadeja first before sending marching orders to Ravichandran Ashwin. Hartley, who is only playing his 5th international Test match, clean-bowled Ashwin with a deceiving delivery, a little short but found the gap between the latter’s bat and pad.

Ravichandran Ashwin walked out as India’s 8th wicket and the second in Tom Hartley’s 32nd over and 101st of the innings. Kuldeep Yadav, who has handy batting experience, is currently at the crease with Jasprit Bumrah and it’s just a matter of time until England inflict the all-out.

Watch – Tom Hartley dismisses Ravichandran Ashwin with a brilliant delivery

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Test matches have become so short and that’s what exactly the commentators were discussing about after the dismissal of Ravichandran Ashwin. The way India had started day 2, there was a feel that India would touch the 500-run mark easily but England came back with something after every session break.

During Lunchtime it was Ben Stokes who bowled for the first time in this 5-match series, earned the major breakthrough of counterpart Rohit Sharma who was building on his hundred, for 103. Once they come, they keep coming as 6 balls after Rohit’s return, James Anderson named Shubman Gill as his 699th Test wicket.

It was the one that Anderson will remember for a long time and carry it back to England. He will hope for Shubman Gill “in India” to show up and put up such numbers at the Swing King’s den. Where it will all be dark, gloomy, chilly and windy with so much swing, which is enough to test the mettle of Gill.

Up next was another fight back from India as Devdutt Padikkal and Sarfaraz Khan, playing only their 1st and 4th Test match, took over from the top-order. The duo got on with the task in hand and remained true to their basics and followed the template set by Gill and Rohit.

Both Sarfaraz and Padikkal took their time to settle, to judge the lengths, understand the pitch and set their eyes. Once they got into that zone, especially Sarfaraz, displayed their big hitting skills. Both scored half-centuries and in the very first ball of the 3rd session, Shoaib Bashir got rid of Sarfarz after a fifty.

Then it was all Shoaib Bashir as the youngster took the wickets of Padikkal and Dhruv Jurel before Tom Hartley joined the party with wickets of Ravindra Jadeja in the 1st ball and Ravichandran Ashwin in the 6th.

Hartley overtakes Ravichandran Ashwin as highest wicket taker of the series

With the wickets of Jadeja and Ashwin, Tom Hartley has overtaken the latter as the highest wicket-taker of the series. Hartley now stands with 21 wickets, 1 ahead of Ashwin and 2 ahead of Jadeja. But even if Hartley returns as the highest wicket taker of the series, it would be something the Indian duo would be better off as the series has remained theirs. England require another 2 wickets to inflict the all-out with Shoaib Bashir working very hard to claim a second consecutive five-for.