Hyderabad: After Ollie Pope's heroics with the bat, debutant Tom Hartley gave England hope to make a match out of the first Test on Day 4 at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium here on Sunday.
At Tea, India were in a spot of bother at 95/3 on a turning track as Hartley picked all the three Indian wickets that fell in the post-lunch session.
Earlier in the day, Hartley had stitched a very crucial 80-run partnership with Pope for the 8th wicket, taking the game away from India's grip. And in the next session, they combined as bowler-fielder to send back Yashasvi Jaiswal (15 off 35) and Shubman Gill (0), in quick succession.
Openers Rohit Sharma and Jaiswal started with a caution as the England spinners were getting appreciable purchases from the wicket.
But Jaiswal made amends to give some life into the run chase by coming out of the crease to score off Hartley.
Noticing this, Hartley delivered three full balls and pulled back the next after seeing Jaiswal making a charge at him.
Jaiswal went through with the shot but failed to middle it and Pope took a sharp at short leg. Two balls later, Gill jabbed a flighted ball straight into the hands of Pope at silly point.
Rohit denied England spinners to dominate and swept and reverse-swept as the English batsmen did to launch a counter-attack against Indian tweakers.
The Indian captain picked up back-to-back boundaries with a reverse sweep off Jack Leach in a brisk start to his knock.
He, however, was trapped leg-before off Hartley after making 39 off 58 balls with seven boundaries.
India sent left-handed Axar Patel up the order to negate the spinners turning the ball away from the right-handers.
Rahul and Axar took India to within 136 runs of the target at the end of the second session.
Brief scores: England 246 & 420 (Ollie Pope 196, Ben Duckett 47; Jasprit Bumrah 4-41, Ravichandran Ashwin 3-126) lead India 436 & 95/3 (Tom Hartley 3-31) by 136 runs.
