Ben Stokes once again delivers when England need it most on tight first day - as India's batting genius Rishabh Pant is carted off on a golf buggy

It was quarter to six on a slow-moving day in Manchester when Ben Stokes did what he has done so often, and gave England the pick-me-up they desperately craved.

Sai Sudharsan had reached a patient but classy 61 on his return to India’s problem position at No 3 when Stokes dropped short, inviting the pull. Sudharsan obliged, and Brydon Carse was waiting for the top edge at fine leg, bringing Old Trafford to its feet.

The scoreboard said India were still a relatively healthy 235 for four. But that did not factor in an even more significant blow 20 minutes earlier, when Rishabh Pant – the batting genius of this gripping series – was carted off on a golf buggy after being pinned painfully on the boot by a full-length delivery from Chris Woakes.

It almost went without saying that Pant, who has spent the past few weeks redefining ‘maverick’, had incurred the injury while missing a reverse-sweep, which he regards as most others do the forward defensive. But any humour quickly vanished: having moved with customary mischief to 37, Pant grimaced in pain. As the swelling on the outside half of his right foot became visible, all of India grimaced with him.

At Lord’s, he had handed the gloves to substitute wicketkeeper Dhruv Jurel after hurting a finger. Now, Jurel will surely be called into action once more – presumably for the rest of this game, and quite possibly for next week’s fifth and final Test at The Oval. If Pant, who was on Wednesday night heading for a scan, has played the last of his cricket for the summer, it will be an almighty blow to India’s chances of turning a 2–1 deficit into something more palatable.

Soon after, Stokes’s dismissal of Sudharsan helped convince him he really had made the right decision by putting India in for the third time in four games, and never mind the fact that no captain in 85 Tests at Old Trafford dating back to 1884 has won after opting to bowl.

And it followed two champagne moments that kept England in the hunt on a day when both sides seemed too busy probing and prodding, too fixated on the prize at stake, to become involved in more argy-bargy.

The first came when Liam Dawson, a Test cricketer once more, struck with his seventh ball back at the highest level. Having somehow survived a morning of playing and missing at Chris Woakes, India’s opener Yashasvi Jaiswal had reached 58 when he propped forward to a delivery that turned less than he expected, and edged to Harry Brook at slip. Dawson greeted his first Test wicket in 2,928 days with a roar and a clenched fist. Some things are worth the wait.

Not long ago, the 35-year-old Dawson suggested Test cricket was no longer on his radar. Here he looked the part, offering the control that Shoaib Bashir – nursing a broken finger – occasionally lacks, and building on Woakes’s dismissal of KL Rahul, who had edged into Zak Crawley’s midriff at third slip for 46 to end an opening stand of 94.

The second of the day’s highlights involved, inevitably, Stokes. He had just had Sudharsan badly missed down the leg side by Jamie Smith on 20 – a planned-for dismissal that would have replicated Sudharsan’s demise in the first innings of the series at Headingley.

But Shubman Gill, who had walked out to boos after suggesting England had disrespected the spirit of the game at Lord’s, remained in Stokes’s sights. Anticipating awayswing, India’s captain padded up to one that went the other way, though Rod Tucker raised his finger only after a leg-before appeal that could be heard up the road at the other Old Trafford.

Since making 585 in his first four innings, Gill has made 34 in three, and twice wasted a review trying to overturn a plumb lbw. When DRS revealed three reds, there was little sympathy as he walked off.

Stokes’s removal of Sudharsan, meanwhile, took his haul in this Anderson–Tendulkar Trophy to 13, joining Mohammed Siraj at the top of the wicket-taking list. And his workload for the series stands at 119 overs, more than he has bowled in any other. So much for trying to nurse his body through 10 high-profile Tests: England’s captain is on a roll, and just you try stopping him.

His energy and charisma were just as well on another sluggish surface that drew some of the sting from Jofra Archer, whose pace was a few mph down from Lord’s, and Carse, who didn’t help himself by bowling too wide, too often.

Not for the first time, Stokes was shouldering another burden, having stuck India in at a venue where, over the last decade, the batting average has fallen steadily throughout Test matches: from 42 on the first day down to 21 on the last.

The ploy worked at Headingley, but backfired at Edgbaston, before Stokes bucked the trend by batting first at Lord’s, and emerging with a heart-stopping 22-run win. That he has gambled again should surprise no one.

As for India, they can feel pleased with a close-of-play score of 264 for four, but Pant’s absence means Shardul Thakur – like Sudharsan, appearing for the first time since Leeds – is already at the crease. And England will take the second new ball immediately this morning in the knowledge that India’s lower order can be vulnerable.

Blocking their path is Ravindra Jadeja, who is seeking a fifth straight half-century, and reprised one of the themes of the series by wasting time as the floodlights came on. No one mentioned the spirit of the game. But then no one needed to: after an old-fashioned arm-wrestle of a day, the cricket spoke for itself.