England reach 89/4 at lunch on Day 3
London, Aug 11: India reduced England to 89 for four wickets at lunch on the third day of their second Test at the Lord's here on Saturday.
Alastair Cook (21), Keaton Jennings (11), debutant Ollie Pope (28) and Joe Root (19) were the batsmen to have been dismissed, with England 18 runs behind India's first innings total.
Jonny Bairstow (four not out) was at the crease at the time lunch was taken
Seamer Mohammed Shami picked up two wickets, while pacer Ishant Sharma and Hardik Pandya took a wicket each.
Beginning the day, Cook and Jennings made a positive start, showing a lot of intent. But a full-pitched delivery missed Jennings' bat and hit his pads, resulting in a LBW decision, with the hosts at 28.
Cook fell soon, as an away-moving delivery from Ishant found an edge and the ball landed in the hands of wicket-keeper Dinesh Karthik.
As soon as 20-year-old Pope joined Root in the middle, India captain Virat Kohli decided to bring in chinaman spinner Kuldeep Yadav to operate from one end. Pope showed a lot of promise, dealing confidently with Ishant, Shami and Kuldeep.
The partnership between Pope and Root had reached 45 runs when a delivery from Pandya dismissed the former. Pope missed the line and was plumb in front of the wicket, with England at 77/3.
The hosts ran further into trouble when Shami was favoured in a LBW appeal against Root to close the session.
Brief scores: England: 89/4 (Ollie Pope 28, Alastair Cook 21; Mohammed Shami 2/37) vs India at lunch on Day 3.
Latest Updates: ENG 131/5 (31.1 Ovs) CRR: 4.2
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Mamata continues sit-in for second successive day over Bengal voter roll deletions
Kolkata (PTI): West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee continued her protest against alleged arbitrary deletions in the post-SIR electoral rolls for the second consecutive day on Saturday, after she spent the night at the sit-in site here.
Banerjee had begun the demonstration at Metro Channel in central Kolkata on Friday, accusing the Election Commission of conspiring with the BJP to “disenfranchise Bengal voters” ahead of the upcoming assembly elections.
The chief minister stayed overnight at the protest site, surrounded by senior Trinamool Congress leaders, legislators and party workers, turning the busy Esplanade stretch into a makeshift political camp.
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Addressing supporters on Friday afternoon, Banerjee alleged that large numbers of genuine voters were being removed from the electoral rolls under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
The CM also reiterated her claim that several voters had been "wrongly marked as dead” and said she would present such individuals before the media and the Election Commission to expose what she described as an "attempt to manipulate the voter list to help the BJP in the upcoming assembly polls".
Senior TMC leaders and state ministers remained present at the venue, while party supporters gathered at the protest site in the morning.
The protest comes just days before the full bench of the Election Commission is scheduled to visit West Bengal, amid rising political tensions over the voter list revision ahead of the assembly polls.
According to official data released on February 28, as many as 63.66 lakh names — around 8.3 per cent of the electorate — have been deleted since the SIR process began in November last year, reducing the voter base from about 7.66 crore to just over 7.04 crore.
In addition, over 60.06 lakh electors have been placed under the “under adjudication” category, meaning their eligibility will be determined through legal scrutiny in the coming weeks, a process that could further reshape constituency-level electoral equations.
