Mohammed Siraj and Akash Deep were praised by former England seamer Darren Gough for their performance in the second Test match at Edgbaston, particularly when the talismanic Jasprit Bumrah was rested.
Siraj took seven wickets in the two innings, while Akash Deep took ten. With three games remaining in the five-match series, India tied the score after defeating England by 336 runs.
At Yuvraj Singh’s charity gala event in London on Wednesday, July 9, in support of the former India cricketer’s YouWeCan cancer awareness charity program, Gough told ANI, “(While) India’s batting has been underrated, they’ve been fantastic, what I saw in the last Test match, without Jasprit Bumrah, Akash Deep and Siraj were absolutely superb.”
After receiving criticism for his lacklustre performance in the series opener at Headingley, Gough also praised Ravindra Jadeja’s efforts with the ball on the last day of the Edgbaston Test.
“Jadeja deserves some recognition as well; I felt she performed admirably on the final day. He was a concern in the first game, but he was also excellent when he returned on a flat field with nothing available,” he added.
After the first two Test matches, the five-match series is interestingly tied at 1-1. The renowned Lord’s Cricket Ground in London will host the third Test, which is scheduled to start on Thursday, July 10.
Prasidh Krishna, who has been costly thus far on the tour, is probably going to make way for Bumrah when he returns to the team for the third Test. According to sources, the pacers will have some help, thus the Bumrah-Siraj-Deep troika would love bowling in the Home of Cricket. They will be raring to take on the England hitters at the iconic Lord’s, where they have previously proven they can cause problems for them on decent batting surfaces in the first two Test matches.