Venue: Headingley, Leeds
Time: 3:30PM IST
Average score at venue: 179
Win percentage while batting first: Not available
Pitch Conditions:
- The pitch at Headingley in Leeds is known to be favourable to fast bowlers who have bagged plenty of wickets at this venue historically.
- India have had a great record at this venue having won the last two matches that they have played here, with spinners surprisingly playing a key role as well despite the domination of the fast bowlers.
- Fast bowlers have a wicket-share percentage of 91.89% compared to spin bowlers’ 8.11%. In India’s previous win in 2002 at Headingley, both Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble grabbed three wickets each in the second innings to set up a huge victory.
Weather prediction:
In what should come as a welcome news to all cricket fans, rains are not expected to hamper proceedings on all five days of this Test, even though there is some prediction of it on the final day, provided that the match goes that far. It will remain partly cloudy on most of the days with temperature ranging from 18°C to 21°C. The players will also have to deal with a high humidity range of mid 80%.
Head-to-head performance:
Matches played: 128
India won: 30
England won: 48
Tied: –
Draw: 50
AT HEADINGLEY, LEEDS:
Matches played: 6
India won: 2
England won: 3
Tied: –
Draw: 1
Top 3 players from India: KL Rahul, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami
Top 3 players from England: Joe Root, James Anderson, Ollie Robinson
Top picks for H2H/WTA contest (top 5 players each)
Top 5 players from India: KL Rahul, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammad Shami, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma
Top 5 players from England: Joe Root, James Anderson, Ollie Robinson, Jonny Bairstow, Rory Burns
Q&A:
Should I pick more bowlers, batsmen or all-rounders?
While England are grappling with several issues from fitness to form of their players, India should not particularly face troubles in selecting their team for this Test. In the second Test at Lord’s, which India won in a spectacular manner, it did look in patches that India were lacking a spinner in form of Ravichandran Ashwin, With hospitals ruling the roost at Headingley, a perfect mix of pace as well as skin should be the right way to go along with batsmen who have so far delivered in the series with Joe Root being the first in automatic selection. selected Ishant Sharma. However, the senior Indian fast bowler delivered the goods on the final day and the visitors should not find themselves in a position to make significant changes. With fast bowlers ruling the roost at Headingley, a perfect mix of pace as well as spin should be the right way to go along with batsmen who have so far delivered in the series with Joe Root, KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma being the first in automatic selection.
From which team should I pick more players in my XI? Which team is stronger?
England would have seldom found themselves in such a troubled position which they are in against India in this series. Plenty of their frontline players such as Ben Stokes, Stuart Broad, Jofra Archer, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood and Olly Stone are missing and their batsmen have been found desperate for runs, barring Root. India, on the other hand, look more settled and have a well-oiled unit which looks primed to clinch the series unless England turn the tables with something magical. India are certainly the stronger side of these two teams and should have more players in the fantasy playing XI.
MORE INFORMATION:
Players’ form: India seam bowler Shardul Thakur has begun bowling full throttle ahead of the third Test which makes the selection matters a little more complex than they were at Lord’s for Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri. Thakur was splendid in his performance in the first Test at Trent Bridge but was sidelined from the second match owing to a hamstring injury from which he has reportedly recovered. It remains to be seen if India trade one of their fast bowlers with Ravichandran Ashwin, given that the prospect of playing one of the world’s best spinners looks extremely tempting against a fragile England batting line-up. England have been rocked further with a shoulder injury to Mark Wood ruling him out of the Test at Leeds, which might pave the way for James Anderson’s Lancashire teammate Saqib Mahmood to make his Test debut. England are solely dependent on Root to get the runs which is a huge peril going deeper into the series with the home team trailing 1-0. But they have tried to address this issue by bringing in Dawid Malan against Dom Sibley which means that there will be plenty of changes in the English batting line-up.
Changes in squad (if any): YES
LIKELY XIs:
INDIA (IND): Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli (c), Ajinkya Rahane (vc), Rishabh Pant (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin/Ishant Sharma, Mohammad Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Jasprit Bumrah.
ENGLAND: Rory Burns, Haseeb Hameed, Dawid Malan, Joe Root (c), Jonny Bairstow (wk), Jos Buttler, Moeen Ali, Sam Curran, Ollie Robinson, Saqib Mahmood, James Anderson.
FANTASY XI:
KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma, Joe Root (c), Virat Kohli (vc), Dan Lawrence, Rishabh Pant (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Sam Curran, Mohammad Shami, James Anderson, Jasprit Bumrah.
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India look to pile up further misery on England
It is not often that a visiting Indian team is far more settled, in-form, functioning like a unit — as they say, and is expected to run over the opponent especially when they are playing in England. In the past, far more talented and richer teams have landed on the English shores only to return home disappointed with heavy defeats — a theme of the past decade.
But as the two teams move forward into a new decade of rivalry, India have stamped their authority and shown their class as well as depth in the first two Test matches that they have played so far, which followed a crushing defeat against New Zealand in the final of the Cricket World Test Championship (WTC).
Indeed, India seem to have learnt their lessons from the debacle in Southampton to produce two masterclass of efforts at Trent Bridge and Lord’s.
In Nottingham, India stood a mere 157 runs away from their first win of the tour but rain intervened to deny them that opportunity on the final day. But at Lord’s, India turned tables around within a day’s time to hand England a taste of their own medicine, bowling out the whole team inside 60 overs on a thrilling final-day finish to take 1-0 lead in the series.
England will not be wrong in feeling that they are far less than what could have been, had all of their frontline players been available for the series. But nothing would have masked their batting troubles — the likes of Rory Burns, Dom Sibley, Zak Crawley and even Ollie Pope to a certain extent have taken plenty of their time to find their feet — but the returns have only been ordinary
Joe Root carries all the responsibility of putting runs on the board as he had so far in this series, with 386 runs in two matches with two centuries and a half-century. In the second innings at Lord’s, the likes of Moeen Ali and Jos Buttler showed plenty of heart in their battles with the Indians in the middle, who were absolutely rampant to record a huge victory by 151 runs.
England have brought in Dawid Malan in place of Dom Sibley, which means that Rory Burns is all set to have a new opening partner in Haseeb Hameed. Malan is likely to be slotted at No 3 with Root continuing at No 4 followed by the likes of Jonny Bairstow, Buttler and Moeen Ali as well as Sam Curran.
The shoulder injury to Markwood should pave the way for James Anderson’s Lancashire teammate Saqib Mahmood, who was absolutely magnificent with the ball against Pakistan in the ODI series. There is also a possibility that Curran might have to make way for Craig Overton, given that the young all-rounder is struggling with both bat and the ball.
But it remains to be seen if England are brave enough to drop the man who made all the difference in the series these two teams played in 2018.
On the other hand, Indians will be certainly pleased with how they finally went past the finish line with their fast bowlers — their biggest hope of winning this series — coming to the party.
Another factor which would give promising signs to the Indian team camp is the performances of Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane in the second innings of the Lord’s Test, wherein the two senior most Indian batsmen teamed up to thwart all the pressure and guide the team to a commanding position.
Virat Kohli has gone without a century for a very long time but the Indian captain hasn’t looked out of touch, which means that the fans would continue believing that a big knock is just around the corner.
India won the last two matches that they played at Headingley, Leeds, by huge margins of 279 runs in 1986 and by an innings and 46 runs in 2002. Interestingly, their legendary batting troika of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly all scored a century in a Test for the only occasion in 2002, here — a feat that the current batch of Kohli, Pujara and Rahane would like to emulate.
