England poised for Test series win

NAGPUR: Jonathan Trott dashed India’s hope of running down England in the final session as the visitors were 161 for 3 at stumps leading by 165 runs on day four of the fourth Test here yesterday.
In the post-tea session, India had only one success in the form of Kevin Pietersen but after that Jonathan Trott (66*) and Ian Bell’s (24*) partnership kept the bowlers at bay.
When Trott was approaching his half-century, Ishant Sharma and MS Dhoni behind the stumps appealed spontaneously for a caught behind, but was turned down by umpire Kumar Dharmasena. This led to some heated exchange between players.
When England’s score was 90 for 2 and Pietersen on two, Virender Sehwag standing at the slip could not latch on to the outside edge of the right hander off Ravindra Jadeja. However, Jadeja castled Pietersen in his next over for 6 to give India hope of bouncing back.
Earlier, India had a successful second session by picking up two wickets as England went into tea at 81 for 2. But just at the stroke of tea, Pragyan Ojha got the wicket of Nick Compton for 34 adjudged lbw. The ball held to its line but thudded into Compton’s pad off an inside edge.
Prior to that R Ashwin snared the wicket of opener Alastair Cook for 13 off 93 balls, an usual pace of scoring for a in-form batsman. Cook must consider himself unlucky as the delivery went past his bat without any hint of outside edge, but Dharmasena ruled him out caught behind.
However, it was a strange morning session with both the teams on a defensive mode, as India declared their first innings at 326 for 9 with a deficit of four runs. Going into lunch, England were 17 for 0 and leading by 21 runs with openers Cook (1) and Compton (14) well settled at the crease. India started the day’s proceedings with no intent of going for quick runs, despite Ashwin and Ojha getting the message from the dressing room.
India started at the overnight score of 297 for 8 and could add only 29 runs before the signal for declaration came. Pragyan Ojha (3) was the only wicket to fall when he was bowled by Monty Panesar. For England, James Anderson finished with impressive figures of 4 for 81 while Graeme Swann claimed 3 for 76.