Given their first-day platform, India had the opportunity to push for 550 or even more. England’s anonymous first hour, when Stokes chose to delay his own entry into the attack, gave no clue of the collapse to come.
Pant, resuming on 65, planted off-spinner Shoaib Bashir for six. When he repeated the dose, this time with one hand off the bat, the left-hander reached his second Test ton since a life-threatening car crash in December 2022. Ever the showman, he celebrated with a somersault.
India were in complete control until captain Shubman Gill, who added 20 to move to 147, needlessly clipped Bashir to Tongue at deep mid-wicket. From then on, the visitors fell apart.
When Stokes finally brought himself on in the 12th over of the day, he again looked a threat with pace, a full length and swing. Karun Nair, in his first Test innings for eight years, drove to the flying Pope at short cover for a four-ball duck.
Tongue was poor on day one and ignored until 18 minutes before lunch on day two. He found the same movement as Stokes and got the crucial wicket. Pant, who should have been stumped by Jamie Smith off Bashir, was befuddled into leaving a Tongue in-swinger that trapped him lbw.
The clouds gathered, the floodlights came on and the lower-order did not resist. Shardul Thakur edged Stokes behind, Bumrah edged to second slip off Tongue, who then bowled both Jadeja and Prasidh Krishna. England took the last seven wickets in 68 balls.
