KL Rahul's resistance and resilience was broken through by England captain Ben Stokes in the morning session of the fifth day of the ongoing Manchester Test, who was looking like an image of calm and composure. Stokes, despite clutching his shoulder on multiple occasions and his hamstring, was at it, bowling an eight-over spell since the start of the day until and plucked out a crucial wicket of Rahul, who didn't look like getting out during his 90-run knock as India moved ahead in chopping off the deficit, which stood at 88 at lunch on the final day.
It was a short-of-a-length delivery from Stokes, which jagged back in a little and didn't bounce as it should have. Rahul was pegged on his pads in front of the stumps and Stokes didn't even look at the umpire. It was a celebrappeal, as authentic as it could get. Stokes knew as soon as the ball hit Rahul's pads that it would go on to hit the stumps. At one moment, Stokes seemed to be turning back, but decided against it and went on a celebratory run as he knew how big a wicket that was, breaking the stubborn 188-run stand.
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Stuart Broad, the former England pacer, popular for such celebrappeals, gave it a 10/10 to Stokes on that occasion. Rahul had played out the most difficult periods in the third innings, especially while coming into bat under the pressure of a 311-run deficit, but managed to carve out another classic Test knock.
Stokes, who has bowled the most overs in a series personally, just kept going. With that marathon eight-over spell, he achieved two key objectives: he got a big wicket and kept his fast bowlers fresh for the new ball. Jofra Archer and Chris Woakes took the new ball for England and the latter scalped out the big one of Indian captain Shubman Gill, who smashed his fourth century of the series.
India will need the likes of Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur and Rishabh Pant, if he can bat, to stay in the middle and bat out time and overs and take the game to a draw.
