Blog Posts by Akshay Iyer

(Note to readers: 'The Enemy Camp' will be the name for Yahoo! Cricket's coverage of the English press during India's tour of England.)

Ian Bell scored his maiden Test double century and his career-best 235 helped Andrew Strauss declare England’s first innings at 591 for 6. James Anderson dismissed Virender Sehwag in the first over of India’s innings and then Graeme Swann took three wickets to leave India reeling at 103-5 at stumps on the third day of The Oval test as England closed in on a series whitewash.

Bell celebrates scoring 200

Ian Bell continued his fine form with a career-best 235 at The Oval.

The Daily Telegraph’s Steve James writes Bell should no longer play Dr Watson role:

On Friday it went largely unnoticed that Bell reached his century before Kevin Pietersen. So he should have done really, as he had been at the crease longer, but we used to fret about such matters. And so did Bell.

After all, it happened on the occasions of his first nine Test centuries that a colleague passed three figures before

(Note to readers: 'The Enemy Camp' will be the name for Yahoo! Cricket's coverage of the English press during India's tour of England.)

The first session on the second day of the ongoing Oval Test belonged to India as they dismissed England’s opening batsmen – Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook – and conceded only 51 runs. The visitors’ joy, however, was to be short lived as normalcy was restored with centurions Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen dominating the toothless Indian attack as England scored 351 runs in the next two sessions to end Day 2 at 457 for three in 123 overs.

Pietersen and Bell

Kevin Pietersen and Ian Bell put on exactly 350 runs for the third wicket - England's seventh-highest Test partnership of all-time and their best against India.

Paul Beaver writing in The Guardian’s blog says Bell plays the straight man while Pietersen offers audacious entertainment to leave India as hapless fall guys:

Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen, England's best two batsmen, are like a music hall double act, the

The Indian cricket team has been dethroned from their No.1 position in the ongoing Test series in England by the hosts, the body language and attitude of most of the players has come under intense scrutiny as have the decisions taken by the team think-tank and the role of the support staff. So it wasn’t much of a ‘surprise’ when the recalled from oblivion Rudra Pratap Singh was preferred ahead of Munaf Patel to replace the injured Praveen Kumar in the Indian XI for the ongoing Oval Test, which is his first at this level in three years.

While it many not have been a surprise keeping in theme with the nightmare series India are having, the decision certainly has raised plenty of questions and the as expected the below-par performance of RP Singh hasn’t helped his skipper MS Dhoni either nor has the left-arm bowler done himself any favours. England continued to dominate India and scored freely on the second day of the Oval Test as the hosts went into stumps at 457 for 3 in 123 overs; RP

(Note to readers: 'The Enemy Camp' will be the name for Yahoo! Cricket's coverage of the English press during India's tour of England.)

The first day of the fourth Test between India and England at The Oval yesterday saw only 26 overs being bowled as persistent rain played truant to give the tourists some much-needed respite from what would have been another long day in the field.

Alastair Cook has been praised aplenty for his stellar form this year and though he had a lean start to the India series, he scored a career-best 294 at Edgbaston as England became the No. 1 Test team. And, England’s batting coach Graham Gooch is all praise for Cook as he says:

I try to coach run-making. Not batting, but run-making. Alastair has the four attributes that make up a run-maker: he's got a great attitude, he has great technical ability, his knowledge pool is increasing all the time and he has the No1 attribute – he has massive powers of concentration.

Virender Sehwag made a disastrous comeback to

(Note to readers: 'The Enemy Camp' will be the tongue-in-cheek name for Yahoo! Cricket's coverage of the English press during India's tour of England.)

Cook out

Alastair Cook was unlucky to miss out on a well-deserved 300 by only six runs.

Alastair Cook missed out on a well-deserved triple century by six runs, but his marathon knock saw England declare their first innings at Edgbaston on 710 for 7 declared; with which Andrew Strauss’ team has taken one step closer to usurping India from their ranking as the No. 1 Test team.

Scyld Berry pays tribute to Cook’s effort in this well-written article in The Daily Telegraph. And, writing in the same paper, Simon Hughes feels with his second Test century, Eoin Morgan has closed the debate on who should be England’s No. 6 batsman.

A telling indictment of how Sehwag’s king pair sums up India’s tour of England so far in this article. Vic Marks compares India’s woes to in the series to the ones usually suffered by lesser county cricket teams.

David

(Note to readers: We will post live match updates, analysis and expert views through the course of the Trent Bridge Test. New updates will appear on top. Please hit the refresh button periodically.)

England win

England players celebrate their thumping 319-run over India in the second Test at Trent Bridge. England now lead the four-Test series 2-0 and are closing in on the No. 1 Test ranking.

11.04 pm – The final post on this blog is reserved for the Bell run-out reversal by Dhoni and the Indian team at Tea-time yesterday. Asked about the incident at the post-match presentation ceremony, England captain Andrew Strauss was all praise for his Indian counterpart and said: “It was a very commendable decision. It was the right thing for cricket. As captain it is a very difficult decision to take and I think Mahendra has set a great example for me and other Test captains.”

10.29 pm - India need to pull up their socks and use the two-day warm-up match against Northants on August 5 and 6 to get some of

(Note to readers: We will post live match updates, analysis and expert views through the course of the Trent Bridge Test. New updates will appear on top. Please hit the refresh button periodically.)

Tweets on England’s dominant position at the end of Day 3 –

@cricketwallah - India's bowling has been plundered for over 400 runs today. Harbhajan has conceded only 47 of these, but is the biggest worry in the attack.

@cricketaakash - One could understand this scoring rate if we'd bowled 140 overs..tired bowlers, flat track etc. But not after 75 overs on a responsive pitch

@warne888 - England just scored 400 runs in a day - tremendous batting - India have been very poor today & do not look like the number 1 side in world !

@ZaltzCricket - India now officially bowling total garbage. Their heads couldn't be any more down if they were the French royal family in the early 1790s.

@cricketaakash - Fast bowlers needed support (not so much wickets) but unfortunately it wasn't forthcoming.

Seaming conditions, the opposition has an outstanding pace attack, the team is down 0-1 in the series and it's up to the batsmen to build on the bowling attack's good work, and the team needs a volunteer to open the batting as one of the opening batsmen is injured. Sounds like pressure and a lot of work ahead? For most batsmen in international cricket probably, but not if your name is Rahul Sharad Dravid.

Dravid has already done it all half through the second of the four-Test series against England - he donned the wicket-keeping gloves at Lord's as India skipper MS Dhoni wanted to have a bowl, he has already faced 548 balls in the series to hold the Indian batting together, and in the absence of the injured Gautam Gambhir, the Indore-born batsman batted at the top of the order at Trent Bridge.

Dravid and VVS Laxman survived a testing final hour on the first day's play, but both started in an aggressive fashion on the second day as conditions veered towards being "batting-friendly" with