India vs England, 2018: Number Nuggets - Key differences between England and India in 2nd Test match

Bowlers:

In the first test match, an extra spinner would have created more impact and would have definitely given a hard time to the England batsmen.

Had there been no rain, Kuldeep Yadav was a perfect replacement for Umesh Yadav in the second test match. However, considering the overcast conditions, the inclusion of Kuldeep Yadav was a blunder by Virat Kohli, which he later accepted.

The other baffling captaincy decision by Virat Kohli was to bowl Kuldeep before Ashwin, who was India's best bowler in the first test match.

In this section, we have skipped comparing the spinners as Indian spinners performed poorly, and Adil Rashid did not bowl at all.

So, how did the Pacers perform for both the teams?

James Anderson's swing was too hot to handle for the visitors

For India, Hardik Pandya and Mohammad Shami were effective with the ball as they took three important wickets each. However, what came as a surprise was the ineffectiveness of Ishant Sharma. The speedster bowled 22 overs, gave away 101 runs, and took just a single wicket.

Overall, between them, they could manage 7 wickets at a strike rate of 53.4 and a poor economy rate of 4.2. In the process, they gave away a total of 261 runs in 374 deliveries. This is not good by any standards.

England Pace bowlers vs Indian Pace bowlers - Entire match.

For England, James Anderson was the star with the ball. Most of his deliveries were simply unplayable. In process of his 9 wicket haul at Lord's, he also became the first fast bowler to take 100 wickets at a particular venue.

He was equally supported by Stuart Broad and Chris Woakes.

Overall, in the match, England's pace attack took a total of 19 wickets at an impressive strike rate of 26.1. That's outstanding!.

Concluding the analysis, India were poor in all the departments as compared to England. This could be seen as India lost by an innings for the first time under Virat Kohli's captaincy.

With 2-0 down in the series, Virat Kohli would need something magical to motivate his team to come out of this misery. Let's see how India bounces back in the third test match.

Thanks a lot for reading this blog. We hope you guys liked it.

We plan to bring you a similar analysis for third test match.