54 balls

India's morning misery.

At the end of the 30th over England we’re 78/5. Mohammad Siraj had just delivered a maiden. England looked unlikely to get a lead, even if one of their wickets was a nightwatchman. In part because Joe Root was out.

But England’s lead would be 99. 

The next 54 balls were why.

A lot went warming after this over in a brief space of time. Ollie Pope defended the first two balls of the 31st against Shardul Thakur. The next four were boundaries. The first was overpitched, Thakur is a swing bowler, that’s part of the job. But the next one was down the leg side and terrible. To follow that up, Thakur went too straight and too full and Pope picked him off again. 

The fourth boundary was more on adrenaline for Pope; he’d been scratchy at this point. Not bad, just ordinary. Before this over, he had a single boundary, which was a top edge off Jasprit Bumrah to a terrible hook shot. 

And that was in the middle of a five over spell for Bumrah where he only allowed six runs, and four of those were in t…