1st India-England Test, Day 3: Lunch Scoreboard
Jofra Archer removes Indian openers before lunch
Chennai, Feb 7: Pacer Jofra Archer consolidated England's position, removing both openers as India went to lunch at 59 for 2 in reply to hosts' mammoth first innings score of 578 in the opening Test here on Sunday.
Cheteshwar Pujara and skipper Virat Kolhi were batting on 20 and 4 respectively at lunch while Archer had figures of 2 for 25.
The home team lost opener Rohit Sharma (6) early, edging one to Jos Buttler after Archer got the ball to move a shade along with extra bounce.
India suffered a second jolt when the young Shubman Gill (29, 28 balls, 5 fours) was brilliantly caught by veteran James Anderson at mid-on when he failed to keep the on-drive down.
Earlier, England posted a mammoth 578 in their first innings, losing the last two wickets in the morning session while adding 23 runs to the overnight score.
Dom Bess (34, 105 balls, 6 fours) was the first to go, trapped leg before by Jasprit Bumrah with one that angled in sharply.
No 10 Jack Leach (14 not out) and No.11 James Anderson (1) prolonged the England innings by five more overs before the latter was bowled when he failed to connect a slog-sweep off Ravichandran Ashwin.
Ashwin, who bowled 55.1 overs, the most by him in an innings so far, finished with 3 for 146 for his efforts while Bumrah also ended up with three wickets for 84 runs from his 36 overs. Ishant Sharma (2/52) and Shahbaz Nadeem (2/167) took two wickets each.
Skipper Joe Root's marathon 218-run knock was the cornerstone of England's massive total on a docile pitch after the visitors opted to bat on winning the toss.
Opener Dominic Sibley (87) and Ben Stokes (82) were the other major contributors.
England ended day two at 555 for eight, with Root leading the way with a marathon effort of 218 (377 balls, 19 fours, 2 sixes) and sharing two massive partnerships with Sibley and Stokes.
Root also became the first cricketer to score a double hundred in his 100th Test.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
