Was the Lord’s pitch altered for Team India? Rishabh Pant addresses

Team India vice-captain Rishabh Pant has stated that his team isn’t much bothered about the England cricket team changing their Lord’s surface plans for the third Test. Interestingly, England is coming into this game after losing the Birmingham Test by a whopping 336-run margin.

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While the Leeds and Birmingham surfaces were completely flat, India went on to post 1000-plus runs in the second Test for the first time in Indian Test cricket history. Eventually, Indian bowlers scalped 20 English wickets to secure their biggest away win in terms of runs to level the series 1-1.

Speaking at the pre-match press conference, Pant asserted that India plans to play according to the conditions presented to them and not overthink what the opposition is planning. He assured that the Indian cricket team will do better from here on in the ongoing series. 

"See, as a team, generally, what we plan is to play according to the conditions given to us. We don’t want to think about what the opposition is thinking, whether they are changing their plans or not. Whatever they’re doing, we’ll do our best and do better from there. Simple," Pant said at the pre-match press conference.

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Pant said the mantra of the team will be to focus on getting 20 wickets in the end. The Indian vice-captain said that this is a chance for everyone to step up and the batters are showing promise in the absence of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli.

Furthermore, Pant also reckoned that India’s mantra is to get 20 wickets on the batting-friendly wickets, which they achieved in Birmingham. However, Gill’s deputy also wanted the batters to step up in the absence of the veteran duo of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.

"The discussion was that England will give us better wickets because the kind of cricket that they play. So for us, the mantra was to get 20 wickets on these batting-friendly wickets. That was already planned. Eventually, our batters have to step up because we don't have two of our senior players too. Like I said, it's an opportunity to step up and people are slowly doing that. Eventually, we might do even better as a team," he added.

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