Daijiworld Media Network
Nottingham, Jul 11 : Greetings and welcome to Day 3 of the opening Test at Trent Bridge. Before the action unfurls, let us have a gander at what the newspapers have in store for us.
Just when England needed a solid start, Ali Cook perished early, enduring a deflection off his pads onto the leg-stump. The pressure continues to mount on the English skipper, whose horror run shows no sign of abating. Ballance and Robson then adhered to caution to see out Day 2 without any further damage. The pitch is still benign and these two will be keen to graft hard and later cash in. Can they rebuild for England? Or will the Indian bowlers make early inroads?
India basked in the Nottingham sunshine yesterday with Bhuvneshwar and Shami blending caution with entertaining strokeplay in a record last wicket stand worth 111 to propel the visitors to 457 after Murali Vijay's 146. Liam Plunkett charged in and banged bouncers from round the stumps, Broad and Jimmy plugged away in the channel outside off but Bhuvi and Shami resisted everything England threw at them until the former mis-hit the lofted drive to deepish mid-on after tea.
Dwivedi writes, 'For their comfortable position in the Test, India should thank the odd-couple. Bhuvneshwar with the pads looks the part. He has an easy, loose stance. He waits for the ball and does not reach for it. He has a solid defence and most importantly, the supple wrists that swing the ball can also work the ball around the field. Shami, meanwhile, can't be confused for anybody but a tail-ender who has limited patience and a big slog sweep.'
Meanwhile, Sandeep Dwivedi's piece for the Indian Express wears the headine, 'A tale of the Indian tail'
K.C. Vijayakumar's report for The Hindu has the headline: 'England left frustrated as Indian tail wags'
Nasser goes on to write, 'Being bowled around your legs and off your thigh pad is about as unlucky as it gets. It's like being run out via a deflection at the non-striker's end. The reality is that pretty well all England captains tail off with the bat. It happened with me, Mike Atherton, Michael Vaughan and Andrew Strauss. Perhaps Cook overdid the 7-2 fields a little, but to reduce the tourists to 346 for 9 on a surface like that was a heroic effort. No matter. Cook knows everyone will be watching him like a hawk in England's second innings. That, I'm afraid, is Test cricket. It's a tough job, and doesn't Alastair Cook know it.'
Nasser's headline reads: 'Captaincy can eat away at you and have an impact on your batting as Alastair Cook is finding out.'
Nasser Hussain writing for the Daily Mail also throws the spotlight on Captain Cook.
Agnew adds, 'Cook will no doubt have trudged back to the dressing-room cursing, wondering what he has done to bring about this bad luck. But he just needs to keep being patient and one day it will turn around.'
Jonathan Agnew's special for BBC Sport focusses on Ali Cook. He writes, 'Any batsman will tell you that when you are in a real trough of form you find weird and wonderful ways of getting out. The ball that dismissed the England captain on the second day of the first Test against India could have gone anywhere. When you are out of touch it hits you on the thigh pad and goes into your stumps.'
Wilson adds, 'The names of Kumar and Shami now sit comfortably in the list of the top 20 last-wicket stands in Test history, with England conceding three of their most frustrating six in little more than two years with Cook also suffering, although not as captain, when Tino Best dominated a partnership of 143 at Edgbaston in June 2012. Yet there was even worse to follow for him on this occasion, thanks to the pesky Shami.'
'Nobody present that day will forget what happened next, even if Cook and some others might want to, as Agar struck a gloriously carefree 98 in a partnership of 163 with Phil Hughes which became comfortably the highest last-wicket stand in Test history, giving Australia an unlikely first-innings lead of 65. Now here, on 10 July, in front of another packed, sweaty and beery east Midlands crowd, a similar nightmare unfolded.'
He writes, 'It was on 11 July last year in Nottingham, also a Thursday afternoon, that they reduced Australia to 117 for nine on the second day of the Ashes series, leaving Cook and Joe Root to begin the mental preparations for their second innings after all, the new batsman was Ashton Agar, a 19-year-old who had been plucked from obscurity by Darren Lehmann to make his Test debut and had been playing club cricket for Henley a few weeks earlier.'
Andy Wilson's piece for the Guardian carries the following headline: 'India's last-wicket stand gives England sense of Trent Bridge deja vu.'