The Cricketer looks at the main talking points from day three of the fifth Test between England and India at the Kia Oval
Yashasvi Jaiswal has bookended the series with centuries. He started out with a hundred at Headingley a month-and-a-half ago and, while it has hardly been a fallow time for an opening batter with more than 400 runs on the tour, he had made ducks in the second innings of each of the last two Tests.
This effort brought a significant change in luck, though: dropped four times between the start of his innings on Friday evening and mid-afternoon on Saturday, he made England pay despite seemingly carrying a niggle that occasionally made him grimace.
Perhaps it was fitting that, in a Test dedicated to the memory of Graham Thorpe, a left-hander should steal the show with an imperious cut stroke. Countless runs were thumped backward of square by a 23-year-old now with six Test centuries.
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Zak Crawley shelled Akash Deep for the fourth drop of the innings (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
What England didn't need when they arrived at the Kia Oval for the third day of this deciding Test was a morning spent chasing the wicket of India's nightwatcher. That, though, was what they got.
Dropped by Zak Crawley early on, Deep – with a single half century across his professional career to his name – made England pay, adding 107 for the third wicket with Jaiswal and going a long way to batting the tourists into a priceless, sizeable lead.
Deep had never passed 31 in Test cricket previously, and a first-class average of 11.48 didn't suggest any immediate danger to England for the carnage that followed.
But he capitalised on a ragged, tired England attack, a man down due to Chris Woakes' injury, that became more wayward as the search for wickets wore on. By the time he finally fell, to a leading edge off Jamie Overton, he'd added 66 to the score.
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Ravindra Jadeja was a thorn in England's side (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
Ravindra Jadeja hadn't once been dismissed in the second innings on this tour until today, finally caught at slip in a game where the catching in the cordon by the home side has been, generously, ragged.
The left-hander made 315 runs before England finally found a way through him in the second half of a Test this summer.
His series peaked with his match-saving century at Old Trafford, but by then he had so nearly seen India to victory at Lord's with his heroic rearguard effort. His 53 at the Kia Oval was, remarkably, his second-lowest offering of the series. He finishes the trip with 516 runs, averaging 86 and still with a game to win with the ball.
Only Sunil Gavaskar, in 1971, has finished a Test series for India with a higher second-innings average.
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