England showed character on day three against India, says Nasser Hussain
Saturday 12 November 2016 07:08, UK
Nasser Hussain hailed England's character after India closed day three of the first Test in Rajkot on 319-4 - still 218 in arrears.
Cheteshwar Pujara and Murali Vijay hit centuries to make the tourists' toil for much of the day, the pair sharing a stand of 209, but England's reward for a day of patience was two wickets in the final two overs.
Spinners Adil Rashid and Zafar Ansari took a wicket each - Haseeb Hameed taking two catches at short leg to remove Vijay and nightwatchman Amit Mishra, respectively.
Hussain told Sky Sports that the late breakthroughs will give both sides pause for thought with two days of the Test still remaining.
"Those last 10 minutes will just make both batting line-ups a little bit nervous," he said. "In this part of the world, you can't get too far ahead of yourself because things change very, very quickly.
"Before those two late wickets people watching might have been tempted to think 'this is going to be another boring draw in India' but here you can never assume that."
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He added: "England showed a lot of character today and not just because of those two wickets at the end.
"They dived around, their body language was good and there were excellent spells of bowling. Stuart Broad bowled five overs for one run after they took the new ball, Ben Stokes bowled a beautiful spell to get Gautam Gambhir's wicket early on.
"I thought everyone played their part and it was almost as if those two wickets were reward for the effort they put in throughout the day.
"But even if they hadn't got those two wickets, I would still say 'well done England, that was an excellent effort'."
India skipper Virat Kohli remains unbeaten on 26 overnight after surviving testing spells from Broad and Stokes that kept him without score for 10 balls, and then on one for six more.
Hussain said the visitors got their tactics to Kohli pretty much spot on. "I think England bowled to him exactly how you'd want to," he reflected.
"Ottis Gibson will sit down with England's analyst and they'll be pleased. We did a beehive of where they have been getting Kohil out and where they bowled to him and that matched up absolutely perfectly.
"The only difference is that they are up against a Kohli that is in nick and is lining the ball up well, so he's leaving well outside off-stump. He waited for England's bowlers to come to him and then he picked them off."
Watch extended highlights from day three of the first Test from 2pm and 8pm on Sky Sports 2, with The Verdict following immediately afterwards at 3pm and 9pm.
