In the break between innings, TNT showcased a couple of the other sports on offer for the princely sum of £29.99 per month. We started with men’s netball (or “basketball” as I believe our American friends call it) before being treated to five minutes of Ultimate Fighting. At least… I think it was Absolute Fighting – it was someone getting the absolute pulp beaten out of them – so come to think of it, it might just have been a repeat of the last 20 overs of England’s first innings.

The day started well enough for England, with Ecclestone wrapping up the Indian tail, taking a catch off Lauren Bell to dismiss Deepti, before bagging the wickets of Renuka and Rajeshwari Gayakwad. The general consensus among the media and commentators seems to be that Ecclestone was poor yesterday, and Lauren Bell appeared to agree with this in the press conference, presumably indicating that Ecclestone herself  wasn’t happy either; and I agree she wasn’t at her best, but still… even if slightly off-song, where would England be without her?

As India had the previous day, England lost two early wickets. The first of these was exactly the one you predicted, but given that India are now a batter down (Satheesh Shubha has a broken finger) I think it evens things up generously that England also have someone in their top 3 who is unable to bat. Heather Knight joined She-Who-It-Is-Genuniely-Starting-To-Feel-Unfair-To-Name back in the dugout, but then Nat Sciver-Brunt and Tammy Beaumont looked to be digging in and things started to feel like they were getting back on track. Not “comfortable” entirely, but not dreadful.

I’m in two minds about the Beaumont run out. The editor of this site spoke for many:

And I sort-of get that, but… England needed to be positive, and there was a single there – TB is one of the sharpest runners in the game, and even though there was a critical moment of hesitation, she would still have made it if it wasn’t for an absolutely exceptional pick-up and throw from Pooja, swooping like an osprey on a juicy pike. It was the fielding equivalent of getting an unplayable delivery, and sometimes you just have to take that on the chin and say well played.

It did mean though the England were just one wicket away from turning a drama into a crisis, and inevitably with Wyatt’s wicket the game was probably up. Amy Jones lasted about as long as you’d expect. (Don’t believe me? Believe Alyssa Healy, who was caught on the stump mic at Trent Bridge saying something to the tune of: “Why does she always do this?”)

And then England’s long, long tail came home to roost, with Sophie Ecclestone coming in at 7. Ecclestone won’t thank me for saying it, but she is a tail-ender. A very handy tail-ender, but a tail-ender nonetheless, and once the ball started spinning, neither she nor anyone else had any answers. It was carnage, with more turns than the Monaco Grand Prix, as England collapsed so hard I had to make on-the-fly changes to my charting code!!

With England on the floor, and a second back-to-back Test match for India to play next week, surely they would enforce the follow-on and finish the job asap? But no! They seem to have decided ahead of time that they weren’t going to use the follow-on, so… they didn’t. Even in these exceptional circumstances, when they could have had the game done and dusted in two days.

Because, as subsequent events suggest, they almost certainly would have had England at least 6 or 7 down, which is where they themselves got to, as England’s spinners turned the tables in the afternoon. The 3 specialist seamers between them bowled just 8 overs, taking no wickets, whilst Ecclestone and Dean did the hard yards – 34 overs for 6 wickets, 4 of them to Dean, whose ability to be able to turn the ball (something (for all her brilliance) Ecclestone doesn’t usually do too much) meant that England could claim to have decisively won that afternoon.

There is, of course, absolutely no chance whatsoever of them winning the game.

But at least they won the afternoon on Day 2.

And Lauren Bell remains undismissed in Test cricket.

I think they call that: taking the positives.