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.

- GNS News Agency, June 17

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 unconquered 91 and Anshul Kamboj compose his first-class best of 51 not out, enabling India to declare on 417/7. By then England Lions had resigned to the remoteness of surmounting the target of 439 in only 38 overs. Dim was the prospect of India’s bowlers wrapping up the Lions in a session. And so it ended, in a tame draw. Stakes remained only for Thakur and Reddy to pluck a few wickets to push up the queue. But they barely got a sniff in the second innings, even as Kamboj continued to leave sizeable footprints on the tour. In the imminent future, both Thakur and Reddy could face sterner competition from the Haryana seamer.