India vs England: India allow England to wriggle out, teams share honours

In the morning, Sharma packed off England's leading run-getter Cook and his opening parner Nick Compton cheaply to leave them gasping at 16 for 2 before Pietersen along with Jonathan Trott staged a recovery.

Compton nicked a slow rising dleivery from Ishant to skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni behind the stumps as England were reduced to three for one.

It soon became 16 for two when in-form Cook got a dubious decision from umpire Kumar Dharmasena as Ishant's angling delivery looked like missing the off-stump.

Pietersen and Trott added 86 runs for the third wicket. Pietersen faced 188 deliveries en route 73, hitting 10 boundaries in the process. Trott played 133 balls for his 44

which had seven fours.

Trott was dismissed when he shouldered an arm ball from Jadeja trying to play for the away spin.

But the fall of Trott, Ian Bell and Pietersen, who was dismissed by Jadeja with his innocuous looking left-arm spin, made England adopt ultra-defensive tactics on the low and slow wicket till stumps.

For India, infusion of fresh blood into the squad in the form of Jadeja, who made his debut, and leggie Chawla, playing only his third Test and his first in more than four years, appeared to have clicked.

The two youngsters picked up important wickets after the early twin strike by Sharma who was easily the pick of all the bowlers.

While Ishant had the best figures of two for 32, Jadeja and Chawla, who got one for 39 from his 13 overs, also did a commendable job.

The first-choice spinners Pragyan Ojha and Ravichandran Ashwin went wicketless on a strip that afforded a bit of slow turn which negated strokeplay.

England crawled their way right through the day against the tight field setting and kept a rate of just above 2 runs per over for the better part of the day.

... contd.

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