Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
I think that if Pant had got out early on, then you may have seen India shut up shop. You're right about fourth innings totals - historically, 200 was considered a big score to chase, but the records show that in the last twenty years or so, bigger totals have been reached quite often. This can partly be explained by the fact that there are much more test matches being played today, but I'd say a bigger cause of the change is that pitches have changed - they always used to deteriorate as the days went by, but now it's not unusual to see pitches at their worst for batting on the first day and then gradually flatten out into something that gets easier and easier for the batsman.
That can be evened out now though with lbw coming more into play with VAR. Batsmen are now have to be far more wary of lbw against the spinners.