West Ham Online

"All 4am starts in the UK 1st Test Jan 25-29 2nd Test Feb 2-6 3rd Test Feb 15-19 4th Test Feb 23-27 5th Test Mar 7-11 Harry Brook has gone home ,replaced by Dan Lawrence of Surrey Virat Kohli not available for first 2 Tests Indian coach Dravid reckons the First Test pitch might turn. No shit Sherlock England havent bothered with a warm up game presumably as they would be put on a green top against an attack of medium pacers"

"Bairstow is nothing more than a flat track bully, get a turning pitch and he looks bang average."

"Bairstow is nothing more than a flat track bully, get a turning pitch and he looks bang average."

Yup... me and my big gob...

England got into a position to put India under pressure after Day 2 at 207/2 with Ashwin off with his Mum Have probably had the two worst days in BAZBALL history since then.

Ben Duckett obvs 28-4

Den Duckett did say yesterday that the more runs to chase the better and he has his wish. 24-3

SPAZball to the rescue no doubt

Would expect England to chase this. 110 overs minimum.

* Breaks the record with 12

"This Jaiswal likes a 6 ... equals the record of 12 in an innings including 3 in a row off J Anderson Another Indian batting superstar with KL Rahul, Kohli & Pant to come back in Call it quits with a lead of 556 & 41 overs left Ashwin back at the ground"

India's lead now over 500.

So many easy wickets fro India without their top bowler

Advantage England? Have thrown it away on Day 3 losing 8 wickets for just over 100. All triggered by the utter stupidity of Joe Root when Ashwin has withdrawn from the game to see his sick mother.

Sounded proper blunderbuss of an innings from the midget... oh and Ashwin out of the third test ... advantage England

India probably even under par on a bit of a flat pitch with 445 England start with 5 bonus runs after India penalised for running down the middle of the pitch after being warned the day before.

Great start by England after India chose to bat Root dropping Rohit Sharma now costing a lot of runs

"Sir A Cook on 'desperate' Root “He’s England’s best batsman there’s ever been in all formats – but he does struggle sometimes with the tempo of this Bazball era,” Root averaged nearly 66 in tests in 2023 and was in the ICC Test team of the year. Wouldn't say that is struggling, even allowing for a couple of poor tests in India."

He's just a bit out of nick. He'll be fine as long as there isn't much pain. Although the comment on looking good for 100 is rather overstated. He has 30 in 137 tests. Kane Williamson has 30 in 97.

Normally he would cruise through his first 20 or 30 runs and then look odds on for a century (unless he is in Australia OBVS) Calm and composed not feeling like he needs to score quicker I'm with the beknighted Essex opener He needs to tell McCullum how HE is going to bat not be bullied by the ex Kiwi slogger

"don't like to disagree with Sir Alistair, but he's not got that one quite right .... Root has scored 29 off 60, 2 off 6, 5 off 10, and then went at it today because his finger was playing up. he's also wrong in the first sentence"

"Yeah, the team were doing brilliant when Root was playing his natural game and getting shedloads of runs."

"Sir A Cook on 'desperate' Root “He’s England’s best batsman there’s ever been in all formats – but he does struggle sometimes with the tempo of this Bazball era,” “He sees all these other people playing these aggressive shots, which suit their style. Rooty has got 11,500 Test runs, he’s brilliant, but he’s so desperate to fit in to what Ben [Stokes] and Brendon [McCullum] are doing that sometimes I don’t think he gets his balance of attack and defence right."

"Sir A Cook on 'desperate' Root “He’s England’s best batsman there’s ever been in all formats – but he does struggle sometimes with the tempo of this Bazball era,” “He sees all these other people playing these aggressive shots, which suit their style. Rooty has got 11,500 Test runs, he’s brilliant, but he’s so desperate to fit in to what Ben [Stokes] and Brendon [McCullum] are doing that sometimes I don’t think he gets his balance of attack and defence right."

"to be fair, i don't think there was anything especially naive or funky. Root's finger is bust, which is why his second innings knock was a bit skittish...not that his average of 10 (or thereabouts) from the first 3 innings means it was the wrong way to go about trying to play himself into form anyway. I do, somewhat, agree on the noises coming out though. Although i would suggest it was more from outside the camp than inside it - even if there were one or two who said a little too much. It wasn't even our best win in India in the past 3 years, but to listen to some (again, mostly the media) it was our greatest performance ever. Won't do us any harm at all for the rest of the series, or generally speaking."

See what I mean? Even the pretend ones are at it.