Rishabh Pant enjoyed his time in the middle as he scored a brilliant 134 runs off 146 balls in the first innings, steadying India's ship before facing a sudden collapse that restricted the Men in Blue to a score of 471.
It all started with Pant's dismissal, who looked in good touch but was sent back to the dugout by Josh Tongue on the second ball of the 108th over.
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Pant put up a brilliant 200+ run partnership with his skipper Shubman Gill as India looked to go past the 500-run mark comfortably. However, after Gill's dismissal, things started to calm down a bit, but the wicketkeeper batsman kept going.
It was Tongue who emerged victorious after a gritty battle with Pant, as he caught him plumb in front of the wicket after the southpaw appeared to offer no shot to a beautiful in-swinger.
Pant's sudden change of approach bamboozled Dinesh Karthik, who went on to question Gautam Gambhir for forcing the Indian star to change his style of play.
Check: Did Shubman Gill score a ton with a broken bat?
What did Dinesh Karthik say about Rishabh Pant's dismissal?
Former Indian wicket-keeper batsman Dinesh Karthik, who was commentating on the match for Sky Sports, seemed to blame India's head coach for possibly sending the wrong message to Pant in the middle.
Karthik believed Gambhir's message was to curb Pant's style of play following the quick dismissals of Gill and Karun Nair, which unfortunately doesn't work out properly for players like him.
"Also very interesting, when a message was sent out to Rishabh Pant, it curbed his style of play. He was just very carefree with his stroke making, and yet the feeling that a message was sent to tell him to calm down doesn't work for certain players, I guess."
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Karthik further explained that as a coach, it's completely okay to get a message across to a batter but over the course of time, one should learn how to send that message in order to get the best out of the batter.
"As a coach, it's completely understandable when you want to get a message across to the batter. But over time, you realise, for certain players, how you send that message becomes very important, what is the tone, what is the language used that gets the best out of the batter."
"Maybe with Rishabh Pant, it needs to be a different way in which you get things done."
India looked to be in the driving seat till lunch, but post the session break, England pulled things back with quickfire wickets of Gill, Nair, Pant, and Shardul, which caused a domino effect in the Indian batting lineup.