Leeds: James Anderson was the wrecker-in-chief for England as India were reduced to 56/4 at lunch on Day 1 of the third Test at Leeds Wednesday.
The 39-year-old Anderson began by taking out KL Rahul for a duck on the fifth ball of the innings. He set up Rahul’s dismissal by enticing him to drive on an outswinger to keeper Jos Buttler after three inswingers.
Anderson troubled Cheteshwar Pujara with inswingers before bowling an outswinger, on which Pujara (1) hung his bat out and nicked behind to Buttler. Kohli (7) unleashed a cover drive off Anderson, only for the thick edge to go behind to Buttler.
At 21/3, the tourists were in all sorts of trouble. But Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane stopped the slide with a partnership of 35 runs for the fourth wicket. At the stroke of lunch, Rahane nicked behind to Buttler off Ollie Robinson to leave India in trouble again.
Sharma was the only batsman trying to defend and negotiate the moving ball. He is unbeaten on 15 runs off 75 balls in a session completely dominated by England.
Earlier, India won the toss and elected to bat first. While the Indian eleven was unchanged, England brought in Dawid Malan and Craig Overton for Dom Sibley and Mark Wood respectively.
Brief scores: India 56/4 in 25.5 overs (Ajinkya Rahane 18, Rohit Sharma 15*; James Anderson 3/6, Ollie Robinson 1/13) vs England.