The hosts English cricket team has made a superb comeback in the ongoing fourth Test against the visitors India at The Rose Bowl (Southampton) after bundling out the visitors for 273 runs. While the Indian batsman Cheteshwar Pujara saved his team with a brilliant century, English off-spinner Moeen Ali helped his team to make a brilliant comeback in the game with a five-wicket haul.

India began the day two on their overnight score 19/0, while England was bowled out for just 246 runs on the day one. Indian openers Shikhar Dhawan and KL Rahul both failed to play long innings as they were dismissed on 23 and 19 respectively.

At next, Cheteshwar Pujara and the skipper Virat Kohli’s brilliant 92-run partnership for the third wicket helped the visiting side to come over from the early opening dismissals. But once Kohli was dismissed on 46 runs, the next Indian batsmen lost their wickets in regular intervals while Pujara held the wicket from the other end. From 142/2, India went down to 195/8 before two important lower-order partnerships helped the team to get the crucial first innings lead.

Pujara put a 32-run partnership with Ishant Sharma for the ninth wicket while Pujara and Jasprit Bumrah put another important 46-run partnership for the last wicket and then India was all out on 273 runs with 27 runs lead over England at the end of the first innings fights.

While every other Indian batsman was struggling, Pujara smashed a brilliant century as he remained unbeaten on 132 off 257 balls with 16 fours. Apart from Kohli and Pujara, none of the other Indian batsmen reached the 30-run mark in that innings.

Meanwhile, English off-spinner Moeen Ali bowled brilliantly who was responsible for Indian batting collapse. He ended with the bowling figure of 16-1-63-5. Apart from that, English pacer Stuart Broad (3/63) picked up three wickets while Sam Curran (1/41) and Ben Stokes (1/23) bagged one wicket each.

Batted just four overs before the end of the day two, England was on 6/0 as they are still trailing by 21 runs. Both the openers Alastair Cook (2*) and Keaton Jennings (4*) remained unscratched at the stumps on day tow.

Some important stats of day 2 of the Southampton Test between England and India

• Playing 119th Test innings, Indian skipper Virat Kohli (6,040 runs) completed his 6,000 Test runs. Kohli becomes the second fastest Indian batsman to complete 6,000 Test runs (according to the number of Test innings) as the legendary Indian batsman Sunil Gavaskar is the record holder who had achieved this feat in 117 Test innings.
• Indian batsman Cheteshwar Pujara scored a brilliant century as he remained unbeaten on 132 runs. It is the highest knock by a visiting batsman in a Test innings at The Rose Bowl (Southampton). The previous record was 119 by Kumar Sangakkara (Sri Lanka) in 2011.
• Indian wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant scored a duck after facing 29 balls. It is the joint most number of balls faced by an Indian batsman to dismiss on a duck in a Test innings. Earlier, Irfan Pathan (against Pakistan at Bengaluru in 2005) and Suresh Raina (against England at The Oval in 2011) have claimed this record once each.
• England off-spinner Moeen Ali had a bowling figure of 16-1-63-5. During India tour of England in 2014, Moeen Ali had claimed one more five-wicket haul and that too in the same venue (The Rose Bowl, Southampton) as he had a bowling figure of 20.4-4-67-6 in the fourth innings of that game. Ali is only the second English spinner to claim multiple five-wicket hauls in Test cricket against India on the home soil. Earlier, the former English off-spinner Ray Illingworth had claimed two five-wicket hauls against India in England but in two different venues.