OTD: India Crumble in Three Days at Old Trafford as Moeen Ali spins England to victory

It was one of the cruelest Test matches India ever suffered. In August 2014, India was up against the host, England, at Old Trafford, Manchester.

For that match, the Indian batting lineup had multiple prolific batters like Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, captain MS Dhoni, Gautam Gambhir, and Murali Vijay. But they felt miserably wrong. James Anderson and Stuart Broad bamboozled the visiting side with the new ball. All of a sudden, one by one, India lost the top four batters. In both innings, the batting lineup collapsed. India was not able to recover from 8 for 4 after the first day, and somehow they made 152 in the first innings.

Captain MS Dhoni played one of the most important knocks of his career—71off 133. Ravichandran Ashwin scored 40 off 42. Vijay, Kohli, Pujara, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, and Pankaj Singh went back to the pavilion without scoring a single run. Broad, the man of the match, took 6 wickets in his 13.4-over spell in the first innings.

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Indian batting combination did not click 

On the same track, the home team scored 367, which was enough to defeat Team India. England won the match by an inning and 54 runs. The men in the blue brigade were able to get only 161 on the scoreboard in their second batting phase. This time, more than the England pace attack, it was Moeen Ali, the spinner, who did most of the damage. 

"I feel so far in the series our batting has not really clicked. We need to get better... Outside India this group has gone well until here. "The wickets have been good for batting, but we haven't applied ourselves," explained the captain of India, Mahendra Singh Dhoni.