Match news and current form
England have been setting up pitches to give their swashbuckling batters a blank canvas for entertainment and it came unstuck in the second Test at Edgbaston - a venue that India had never won at from eight previous attempts - when the hosts conceded more than 1,000 runs without being able to pick 20 wickets.
It looks as though that approach is about to change after head coach Brendon McCullum revealed he requested a surface “with plenty of life in it” so that they can instead look towards strengthening their bowling assets for the series. Their slower seam bowlers such as Chris Woakes (series average 96.66) and Brydon Carse (52.50) are in desperate need of some assistance from the pitches, and the way they bowled West Indies (121), Ireland (172) and Sri Lanka (196) out for under 200 in their last three Lord’s wins points them to a tried and true method of victory.
India badly needed a Test victory after winning just one out of nine previous matches (D1, L7) and they cannot afford to get complacent knowing that their new captain made most of the difference. Shubman Gill’s 430 match runs in a victory of 336 runs shows just how tight a contest it could have been had England been able to restrict him to his career average of 40 or thereabouts.
But you have to go back to December 2022 (Bangladesh) and then even further August 2019 (West Indies) to find the last two occasions that India won back-to-back games in an away series, and then to 1986 to find the last time they did so in England, so they’re going to have to trend some almost uncharted waters to take a 2-1 series lead. The way their captain is going in the series along with fast bowler Akash Deep, it cannot be ruled out.
Head-to-head history
The two nations now share a 3-3 record on UK soil since the beginning of 2021, making this just as even a contest as expected.
India won the last three H2Hs at Lord’s after winning just one of the first 16 (D4, L11), but after ending their duck at Edgaston last week, venue history seems to mean very little in this series!
Hot stats and streaks
• Five of the seven Lord’s Tests since India’s previous visit were won by the team that batted second.
• Only two teams (England v SL 2024 and Australia 2023) scored 220+ runs in the first innings of those seven matches.
• Karun Nair’s top score in this series so far is just 31.
• Shoaib Bashir’s two Tests at Lord’s earned him combined figures of 2-99 from 30 overs.
Key players to watch and missing players
Ben Duckett has been one of England’s star performers of the series with 236 runs from his two games and is expected to get better at Lord’s, having recorded 50+ run scores in three of his seven innings there at an average of 71.67. On top of that, he averages 55 (110/2) against the bowling of the returning Jasprit Bumrah even after Bumrah dismissed him in the first innings of the Leeds game. Bumrah has now played ten Tests in England, but on only two occasions has claimed at least six match wickets.
It’s not immediately obvious who Bumrah will replace since his fill-in for the second Test, Akash Deep, took ten wickets in Birmingham. That will likely depend on a read of the pitch. England also have to make a similar decision about whether to stick with Chris Woakes’ tremendous Lord’s record in the face of two ineffective performances in this series, or to jettison Shoaib Bashir for an additional seamer.
Betting analysis
Five days of hot and sunny weather and a pitch that should give more assistance to the fast bowlers means a draw will be remotely likely. With the form that England’s wicketkeeper is in, backing Jamie Smith to make 50+ match runs looks very safe.