Yashasvi Jaiswal on Saturday scored his sixth Test century off 125 balls as he led India’s charge against England on Day 3 of the fifth Test at the Oval. Jaiswal hit 11 fours and two sixes en route to the century, which is his second of the series. He has thus bookended the series with centuries, having scored one in the first innings of the first Test earlier.
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Jaiswal was dropped twice towards the end of Day 2 in which he took the attack to the opposition. The first was when he was on 20 with Harry Brook putting him down at second slip. Then he was given another chance quite spectacularly by Liam Dawson while he was on 40, with the latter dropping it despite the ball coming straight to him at a rather comfortable pace.
On Day 3, Jaiswal took a backseat somewhat, letting Deep take more of the strike as is usually the case with nightwatchman in a first session. Deep took his chances and they ended up paying off for him. The pair put up a 107-run stand in 150 balls that was the source of much frustration for England.
Deep scored 66 in 94 balls before finally falling to Gus Atkinson after which Jaiswal saw in-form captain Shubman Gill fall off the very first ball of the third session on 11 off nine balls. Gill thus missed out on break Sunil Gavaskar’s long standing record for most runs by an Indian in a Test series, finishing the Anderson-Tendulkar with an incredible 754 runs in 10 innings.
Like Jaiswal, Deep also benefitted from England’s butter fingers. He was dropped by Zak Crawley in the slips off Josh Tongue, England’s fourth dropped catch of the innings, and stand-in captain Olly Pope looked bereft of ideas at that point. England are missing the services of regular captain Ben Stokes, Jofra Archer and Chris Woakes and they struggled to generate swing from the pitch despite the overcast conditions. In fact, the floodlights were on when Deep raised his half-century in 70 balls with a flashy four.
Jaiswal had earlier gotten close to adding to his tally of centuries in the series after the ton at Headingley in the first innings. He had scored 87 of 107 balls in the first innings of the second Test at Edgbaston, before falling to Stokes after taking a hack at a wide delivery. Jaiswal’s dismissal ended a 66-run stand with Gill in that innings, and the latter went on to score a record 269 in 387 balls. Jaiswal fell for a 22-ball 28 in the second innings while Gill, incredibly scored 161 in 162 balls as India won the Test by 336 runs.
