Old Trafford, old tensions, new demands

Old Trafford was unusually quiet two days out from the Test. The air, grey and heavy, carried little of the usual match-week bustle, apart from the players, who at this point of the series, appeared to be operating on autopilot. Outside, in nearby Deansgate, preparations were in motion for Manchester Day, the city's annual burst of parades and performance, set to unfold over the weekend. Inside, though, it was about restraint and restarts, as if both teams were still catching their breath eight days after the storm at Lord's.

After the heat of the last Test - both literal and metaphorical - it fell to Rishabh Pant to lighten the mood when the teams crossed paths for the first time in Manchester. As India wrapped up training, England were just beginning theirs, with Ollie Pope trying to get himself padded up. Walking along the boundary toward the team bus, the Indian vice-captain spotted a stray football. With a gentle swing of his boot, a technique perhaps refined after a recent trip to Manchester United's Carrington training centre, Pant sent the ball skimming along the ground and struck Pope's legs from about 20 yards out. As a startled Pope turned, Pant crouched down in a mock appeal for LBW, much to his own amusement.

After 15 days of high-intensity cricket, this eight-day break couldn't have come at a better time. Both teams have taken on heavy tolls. Ben Stokes emptied himself with two lung-busting spells of nine and 10 overs on that final day at Lord's and stayed true to his claims of not wanting to leave his bed for a few days. Jofra Archer, playing his first Test in four years, didn't wait to get to a bed; he collapsed to the ground, in relief and exhaustion, immediately after that last wicket fell. On the other side, Jasprit Bumrah's workload had stretched beyond his bowling, as he faced 54 pressure-soaked deliveries trying to salvage a lost cause. Each team has lost a player to injury, and each has had to summon for reinforcements.

The mental weight is still harder to measure, but Mohammed Siraj did his best to describe how difficult it had been to move past the image of that final ball, a solid forward defence, middled, yet somehow bowled. Three Tests in, the margins have been both fine and brutal. And so here we are at 2-1, weighing what-ifs that could just as easily have flipped the numbers on the other side of the hyphen.

But after the pause comes the push and Shubman Gill dialled the intensity right back up a day before the game when he