Nitish Kumar Reddy, Shardul Thakur miss opportunities to make claim for place in Leeds Test
Nitish Kumar Reddy turned his head back in disbelief. He thought he had executed the textbook forward defensive to a gentle nipbacker from George Hill. His head was still, hands close to the body and the front foot reasonably forward. But the ball had just enough mischief, and precision, to sneak through a microscopic gap between the pad and ball to hit the stumps. A few overs later, Shardul Thakur saw Hill disarray his set of furniture too, keeping the race for the seam-bowling slot for the first Test on a knife’s edge. Kumar had stuttered to 42, surviving a dropped catch and looking vulnerable to Hill’s military medium offerings; Thakur had freewheeled to 34, before his misjudgment.
Both rued the squandered opportunity to stake their claims, as they watched Tanush Kotian stroke an unconq...
