Twitter Reactions: England annihilate India by an innings and 159 runs at Lord's

England have defeated, rather annihilated India inside three days of action at the iconic Lord’s courtesy of some exceptional swing and seam bowling by a relentless attack. The story of the first innings repeated once again as the conditions changed once again and were completely different compared to the third day. But the batsmen didn’t improve even a bit and surrendered abjectly as India were bundled out for 130 in the second innings.

The hosts surprisingly decided to bat in the morning and added some quick runs in the half-hour period. The duo of Sam Curran and Chris Woakes extended the lead up to 289 runs as their skipper Joe Root decided to declare after the former lost his wicket to Hardik Pandya. England eventually went on to post 396 runs in the first innings for the loss of seven wickets.

Amidst the rain interruptions, the second innings started for India. Meanwhile, they were also struck with a huge blow as their captain Virat Kohli was injured due to the back sprain. But nothing changed for the openers. Murali Vijay bagged a pair and was done in by an inswinger by James Anderson this time. The same happened with KL Rahul as he failed to identify the incoming delivery.

Pujara’s steely knock

Cheteshwar Pujara though looked solid. He made up for the first innings’ unfortunate run-out and fought bravely. Ajinkya Rahane walked in to bat at 4 as Kohli was out of the field for 37 minutes in the morning due to his injury. The duo batted well and just when one thought they were building a decent partnership, Rahane succumbed to a harmless delivery committing the same mistake once again. Kohli came out to bat then and played in grimacing pain.

He batted well once again and unfurled a couple of classy drive. However, Stuart Broad was in the middle of a superb spell which first rattled the stumps of Pujara with a vicious inswinging cherry and then had Virat caught at short leg. In the same over, Dinesh Karthik was caught plumb in front of the stumps which has summed up his 4 innings in this series so far.

At 61/6, it was only a matter of time for England to register a huge win. But Pandya and Ravi Ashwin staged a little fightback to post India’s first fifty-run stand of the match. They looked comfortable and played some beautiful shots as well and only delayed the loss. Once Pandya was sent back by Woakes, it again started and were eventually bundled out for 130 runs with Ashwin ending up being the best batsmen of the match for them.

Here’s how Twitter reacted during the play: