India's No. 1 off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin produced an absolute pearler to get rid of the England captain Ben Stokes in the second innings. Stokes' dismissal in the second innings turned out to be his 12th dismissal against the Indian spinner in Test cricket.
Notably, Ashwin has the wood over Stokes as he has dismissed the southpaw the most number of times in Tests. Australia's leading spinner Nathan Lyon holds the record for dismissing Stokes the second-most number of times in the red-ball format. Stokes has got out to Lyon nine times in Test matches.
Australia's gun speedster Mitchell Starc has dismissed the England red-ball captain the joint-second most number of times (9) in Tests.
Stokes' struggle against right-arm off-spinners continued on Saturday (January 27) after Ashwin outfoxed him again. Stokes' dismissal came on the penultimate delivery of the 37th over. The 37-year-old wily off-spinner pitched the ball on the middle stump around the good-length area and it turned away from Stokes sharply to cannon into his off stump.
Stokes went forward to block the delivery but couldn't cover the turn as the ball fizzed past the outside edge and all the English captain could hear was a death rattle.
Watch Ben Stokes' dismissal:
Despite Stokes' dismissal, England regrouped as Ollie Pope and Ben Foakes combined to take the tourists out of a precarious position. The duo added 112 runs for the sixth wicket to ensure India bat again in the Test match.
India's playing XI:
Rohit Sharma (c), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Ravindra Jadeja, Srikar Bharat (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj
Bench: Rajat Patidar, Mukesh Kumar, Dhruv Jurel, Kuldeep Yadav
England's playing XI:
Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes (c), Ben Foakes (wk), Rehan Ahmed, Tom Hartley, Mark Wood, Jack Leach
Bench: Ollie Robinson, James Anderson, Daniel Lawrence, Gus Atkinson
