India will meet England in the third Test at Lord’s in London on Thursday with the five-match series level at 1-1 after the visitors’ thumping 336-run win in the last game. Pacer Jasprit Bumrah is expected to figure in the Indian side after being rested at Edgbaston in Birmingham.
With the series nicely poised at 1-1 going into the third Test, the narrative built around both the teams has changed significantly following India‘s 336-run routing of England at Edgbaston. If it wasn’t for the dropped catches and lower-order collapses at Leeds, India would have been 2-0 up in the five-match series.
The in-form Indian batters will back themselves to succeed on a potentially challenging surface while the bowling attack, which did not inspire confidence in the first game, will pose a tougher test to an unsettled England with the return of Jasprit Bumrah at the Lord’s Test beginning on Thursday.
Considering the inexperience of the Indian squad under new captain Shubman Gill, the team has not only competed but has won majority of the sessions over the course of the two Tests. England, on the other hand, were expected to steamroll the opposition following the retirements of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli but India’s performance thus far has been a testament to their depth and rich talent.
ENG vs IND : Previous Performances
The opening Test in Leeds saw England register a thrilling five-wicket win, chasing down 371 with Ben Duckett (62 & 149) starring with the bat. India had dominated the first innings through Shubman Gill’s 147, Rishabh Pant’s 134, and Yashasvi Jaiswal’s 101, but England’s batting lineup ran through the Indian bowling unit in the end.
India responded with a historic win at Edgbaston, thrashing the hosts by 336 runs to register their first-ever Test win at the venue. Captain Gill led from the front with a 269 in the first innings and 161 in the second, while Akash Deep filled in brilliantly for Jasprit Bumrah with a 10-wicket haul. India will now be happy with Bumrah’s return at Lord’s. England, meanwhile, have brought in pacer Jofra Archer to exploit the expected pace-friendly conditions.
ENG vs IND : Head to Head
England clearly have an edge over India in Test matches, scoring 52 wins in 138 matches while India have won 36 with 50 games ending in draws. However, India boasts a better record in the last 10 matches with six wins compared to England’s four. At Lord’s, the result gets skewed in England’s favour with the home side winning 12 of the 19 games and India having only three wins at the hallowed venue.
ENG vs IND Head-to-Head Record in Tests:
| Â Matches Played | Â Â Â Â Â Â 138 |
| England won | Â Â Â Â Â Â 52 |
| India won | Â Â Â Â Â Â 36 |
| Â Â Â Â Draw | Â Â Â Â Â Â 50 |
| Â First Meeting | 25th to 28th June, 1932 |
| Â Last Meeting | 2nd to 6th July, 2025 |
ENG vs IND : Pitch and Weather Report
The pitch at Lord’s has been balanced lately. During the WTC Final last month, it had an uneven bounce, troubling both batters and fielders. With England looking for a surface that suits their pacers after a defeat at Edgbaston, a green, well-watered pitch has been prepared. The average first innings score at this venue has been 309 runs. The team batting first at this venue has come out victorious 53 times. Notably, there is no chance of rain during all five days of the Test match.
Lord’s, as the cliché goes, is a “look up, not down” venue, where the overhead conditions play a bigger role in the pitch’s behaviour than the surface itself. This notion was borne out at the WTC final last month, when the sun broke through for the final day and a bit, and a pitch on which both sides had struggled became a road.
London has just emerged from a heatwave, and though recent days have been pleasant, temperatures are forecast to climb back up to 32 degrees during the Test. After voicing their displeasure with the Edgbaston surface, England will hope for something livelier at Lord’s, looking at the tinge of green currently on the pitch on the eve of the match. Recent matches here, including the WTC Final, have followed a similar pattern: tricky first innings conditions followed by progressively better batting as the game wears on.
That precedent is unlikely to discourage England from their preferred “we’ll have a chase” mentality, for all that Stokes insists his team are not webbed to the notion. A clear and dry forecast will be a factor, and so too a surface that still had a covering of live grass on the eve of the match and might offer some assistance on the first morning.
ENG vs IND : Big Picture : India have the momentum after Edgbaston triumph
At Headingley, India lost the unlosable Test. At Edgbaston, they made spectacular amends, in circumstances that belied even their most optimistic pre-series hopes.Somewhere between the heatwave warnings and the carry-your-water-bottles signs, tradition will loosen its collar this week.
The MCC has allowed its members to go jacketless in the Pavilion, that’s how hot it’s expected to get at Lord’s. The second Test of the summer at this historic ground already carries a different weight, not the ceremonial grandeur of last month’s WTC Final, but the sharp edge of a contest after two rounds of traded blows.
The series, level, now moves to a ground that isn’t. Lord’s, with its famous slope, has a way of tilting things, and this feels like the game where momentum could start to lean. England are under watch, while India arrive with the surer footing, at a place where they’ve won more Tests than anywhere else in this country.
If there had been a quiet belief before the tour that Shubman Gill was too good to keep averaging below 30 in overseas Tests, then the captain’s match haul of 430 runs – second only to Graham Gooch in a famous forerunner of this latest Lord’s contest 35 years ago – was an insatiable response to his team’s hour of need.
And if India’s team selection – with their focus on batting depth in the lower-middle order – had implied a willingness to settle for a draw while their star strike bowler Jasprit Bumrah preserved his strength for the back end of the campaign, then no one told Akash Deep that he was intended as a conservative pick.
Akash Deep’s superb ten-wicket haul dripped with a new-ball threat of which Bumrah himself would have been proud, most particularly his candidate for ball of the series to Joe Root in the second innings (and no, it was not a back-foot no-ball – MCC has clarified the ruling).
With Mohammed Siraj stepping up as he has often done in Bumrah’s absence (his average in 15 Tests without Bumrah is almost eight points lower than when he plays second fiddle), India’s seamers harnessed an especially truculent Dukes ball and made sure that barely an over went to waste while it was at its shiniest and newest. England’s startling tally of six ducks in the first innings confirmed the extent to which England were caught cold by fast bowling of the highest class.
Not that England will be unduly rattled by the extent of this setback. It’s easy to mock their determination to take on any given run-chase, particularly when two of their last four fourth innings have resulted in defeats by 423 runs against New Zealand in Hamilton in December, and now by 336 runs at Edgbaston.
But six 250-plus chases in the Bazball era, with India on the receiving end of each of their two highest in history, confirms the extent of England’s divorce from precedent. Where once there might have been shame at such a monumental thumping in a Test match, now there’s merely a shrug, and a determination to do the same again next time, only better.
Whether India allow England to improve on that showing, however, is a different matter. Gill’s relentless run-making at Edgbaston reflected his determination not to be drawn into playing his opponents’ game – as had arguably been the case when he holed out for 147 to trigger the dramatic collapse that allowed England back into that first Test. In the second, fatigue eventually got the better of him on 269 but, until that point, he had been in control of 93% of his shots across 386 balls, a remarkable figure that confirmed his refusal to give any suckers an even break.
Perhaps the return of Jofra Archer will give Gill the hurry-up that was so lacking at Edgbaston. The mind’s eye is sure to drift back to Archer’s stunning debut on this ground six years ago, when he felled Steven Smith in the midst of a witheringly quick spell in the 2019 Ashes. The reality, however, might be subtly different.
But what they achieved last week was novel: the first-ever win for an Asian side at Edgbaston, and they did it without Jasprit Bumrah. Now, they can reintroduce their spearhead. England, by contrast, turn to Jofra Archer, a high-ceiling option returning to a format that hasn’t been kind to his body in the past.
Somewhat fittingly, this return after a four-year absence comes at the venue of his sensational debut in 2019, when he floored the great Steve Smith. And in Shubman Gill, England find themselves fronting another immovable presence at No.4, one displaying early signs of an insatiable appetite that made the opposition’s batting coach – Marcus Trescothick – sick of watching him bat 549 balls for a match aggregate of 430.
At the age of 30 and with a litany of injuries now hopefully behind him, Archer would be within his rights to pitch himself as a different type of bowler for this second coming: a scalpel rather than the sledgehammer that Brydon Carse and Josh Tongue set out to be, with varying degrees of success, across the first two matches.
Either way, it promises to be the grandest of events. Last month, the most illustrious stage in the game proved utterly pivotal to the success of the World Test Championship (WTC) final. Now, Lord’s plays host to the modern game’s actual overlords, at the most perfect juncture of a compelling five-Test series. Neither team seems minded to take a backward step, but to judge by the battles that have gone before, someone will have been forced to blink by the time these five days are done.
What’s certain is that Lord’s will hum louder this time, even through the quieter, holding stretches. This isn’t an ICC final with split loyalties, this is England at home, under scrutiny, searching for a quick turnaround. The heat will be on, literally and figuratively, as familiar patterns give way to fresh challenges. Their method hasn’t faltered, but the series is evolving, and the side that adapts quickest, on pitch and beyond, may well set the tone for what’s to come.
ENG vs IND : Vital Stats that matters
- Archer is set to play his 14th Test, and his first since the tour of India in February 2021, 1595 days ago. In that period, he has missed 53 Tests across 18 series, home and away.
- Gill has a current series tally of 585 runs at 146.25, with three hundreds and a best of 269. Among the many records he could challenge in the remaining three Tests, Gill needs just 18 more to pass Rahul Dravid’s haul of 602 in 2002, the most by an India batter in England.
- Joe Root needs 45 runs to become the first batter to score 3000 runs against India in the Test cricket
- Chris Woakes has taken 32 wickets at 12.90 in seven tests at Lord’s, including three five-wicket hauls. He has also scored 340 runs at 42.50, including his only Test century … against India in 2018.
- India have won just three of their previous 19 Test at Lord’s (against England’s 12 wins). However, two of those have come in their last three visits, in 2014 and in 2021, when Siraj claimed eight wickets in the match after KL Rahul’s match-defining hundred.
- India have won three Tests at Lord’s – 1986, 2014 and 2021 – the most by them at a venue in England.
- Â 3365 runs scored across the first two Tests – the highest aggregate after the first two Tests in a series. The previous highest being 3230 runs in Ashes 1924/25.
ENG vs IND : Team News
England :Â
The hosts have bowled a staggering 443 overs in the series so far and given the short turnaround, changes were expected. In comes Archer for Josh Tongue. Stokes confirmed that Carse has pulled up well and will hold on to his spot.True to form, England confirmed their XI well before the match, with Archer returning to the fray. He is the only change from the team that lost at Edgbaston, with Tongue – the series-leading wicket-taker with 11 at 33.63 – making way after his heavy workload in the first two Tests.
England Playing XI:Â Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes (c), Jamie Smith (wk), Chris Woakes, Brydon Carse, Jofra Archer, Shoaib Bashir
India :
As has been confirmed already by Gill, Bumrah will return for the Test and although Siraj may be due for a break sometime, he’ll be expected to push through while Prasidh Krishna is likely to sit this one out. India might likely to resist the temptation of making another change because they can get a pure batter – Sai Sudharsan – for Washington Sundar if they feel a second spinner is not needed but that would again force them to rejig their batting line-up with Karun Nair having played at No.3 in Birmingham.
Jasprit Bumrah’s absence did not derail India’s ambitions at Edgbaston – far from it – but his return after a fortnight’s rest could turbo-charge their bid to move 2-1 up, in a series in which they’ve been on top for at least seven days out of ten. He is expected to slot back in in place of Prasidh Krishna, whose economy rate took a battering in the first two games.
With Akash Deep and Siraj sharing 17 wickets at Edgbaston, that seam unit suddenly looks potent in the extreme. Which is all the more reason why India will likely resist the temptation to include the wristspinner Kuldeep Yadav. Washington Sundar was the safer option and justified his pick with a key 42 from No. 8 in the first innings.
India Probable Playing XI : Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Karun Nair, Shubman Gill (c), Rishabh Pant (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Nitish Reddy, Washington Sundar, Jasprit Bumrah, Akash Deep, Mohammed Siraj
ENG vs IND Fantasy XI : Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Duckett, Jamie Smith (wk),Brydon Carse, Yashasvi Jaiswal,Shubman Gill (c), Rishabh Pant (wk),KL Rahul, Jasprit Bumrah, Akash Deep
ENG vs IND : In the Spotlight : Jofra Archer and Jasprit Bumrah
There’s no denying the buzz of anticipation that Jofra Archer‘s return to Test cricket has created. There aren’t many more box-office cricketers in England’s ranks, especially given his exploits here at Lord’s in 2019. To say a fair bit of water has flowed under the bridge since then is a gross understatement, but despite his well-documented elbow and back issues, Archer has now been injury-free for the best part of two years.
That said, his robustness hasn’t been tested to the fullest extent in white-ball cricket. He bowled just 18 overs on his comeback for Sussex last month, on an admittedly placid deck at Chester-le-Street, but that was sufficient for England to fast-track him back into the big time.
When it comes to box-office, even Archer has to cede status to the undisputed grandee of contemporary seam bowling. Every ball that Jasprit Bumrah bowled in the first Test at Headingley felt like a wicket about to happen – and so it proved in the first innings, when he struck in each of his first three spells, and would surely have powered India into an indomitable position had it not been for his costly overstep with Harry Brook on 0.
Even when his threat was negated in England’s second innings, it first required an outbreak of rare deference from Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett to set the course for their 371-run chase. He’ll be rested and raring to go at Lord’s, with a place on that dressing-room honours board very much in his sights.
ENG vs IND : Match Prediction
The series is stuck at 1-1 at the moment, but the best bowlers in the series have been from India. Bumrah is by far better than anybody else on show, but the way Akash Deep bowled the last Test and Siraj, they were outstanding and that’s a huge, huge bonus for India to have three seamers, who can take wickets. That is a concern for England at the moment.
The England bowling attack will be strengthened by the expected return of Archer. Having regained full fitness, right-arm pacer Gus Atkinson is also back in the squad.With India batters making England pacers toil in the first two games, Brydon Carse and Josh Tongue could be rotated.
On the batting front, pressure will be on opener Zak Crawley after twin failures at Edgbaston while more runs are expected from the bat of skipper Ben Stokes, who did not take much time to gain rhythm with the ball but the same can’t be said about his batting.Crowd turnout has been exceptional in the series thus far and Lord’s will be another sellout, adding to the excitement built by the competitive nature of both teams.
Riding on the momentum, India is ready to assert its domination over England but again playing in their own conditions and now the wounded lions one could only wipe away England’s chances at its own peril.
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