Joe Root may have finished the day stuck to 99, but it wasn’t without a little drama – and smile – in the last moments at Lord. On the 83rd day, with a few balls remaining in front of the stubs, Root launched 98. He led the ball from Akash deep towards deep back, where Ravindra Jadej took care of. He felt the possibility of a second run – and maybe his hundred – the root waited. But Jadeja has always pretended to shrink and deliberately drop the ball as if he were calling for a root to take him. Root laughed, resisted temptation and settled to one. Jadeja grinned. Root remained undefeated for 99 years. The crowd laughed and it was a moment of classic lightness in the middle of a cricket of a heavy day. England decided the bat first in the third test of the series and reached 251 for four stumps. Root was in the heart of all this and created a brave knock full of patience and class. His stay of 191 ball in the fold showed a different page than England usually developing a rapid “basball” approach.
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The day saw India keeping tight lines, and the evening of Jadeja and Bumhrah struck to remove Ollie Pope and Harry Brook, while Nitish Reddy’s double blow before lunch provided India an early spark. In Lordov, cricket and crowd, magic is still doing well – as well as teasing the art, at least if you are a jad.
