tea Bangladesh 149 and 56 for 0 (Zakir 32*, Shadman 21*) need 459 runs to bat India 376 and 287 for 4 dec (Gill 119*, Pant 109) lead of 432 runs

With the pitch not yet broken up and the average seam movement dropping from 1.3 degrees on the first day to 0.4 degrees on the third day, these were the best batting conditions of the match. Despite India’s attacking approach to prepare for the declaration, Bangladesh could only get 16 wrong answers in 41 overs on the third day, which yielded 206 runs. A good sign for them was that the doldrums continued: they themselves made just 17 errors in the 13 overs they batted before tea.

Faced with these conditions, Gill and Pant, both aggressive batsmen with a penchant for counter-attacking, realised that only they could take themselves out of the game and put their heads down for big shots. They continued to respect good balls and, once in, jumped out of the pitch to hit sixes. Gill hit Mehidy Hasan Miraz, who bowled 25 of the 64 overs of the second innings, for four of them, taking his tally to 28 sixes in only his 26th Test. Pant took a liking to the left-arm spin of Shakib Al Hasan and hit four sixes himself, taking his tally to 59 in just 34 Tests, the seventh-highest for India. India have now hit 85 sixes in 2024, just five short of the record for most sixes by a team in a calendar year.

What the duo did outside the sixes was more impressive. Unlike Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rohit Sharma on the third night, who simply tried to impose their way through the bowling, these two started the day respecting the bowling and were able to defend for a while without having to worry about edges and close fielders. It was not until the seventh over of the day that someone tried to force the issue and Gill did so beautifully with the two sixes over wide long-on.

Pant, particularly keen not to give the ball away after an easy first-innings dismissal, took even longer before producing shots – none better than the ramp sweep of Hasan Mahmud for a six over fine leg ten minutes before lunch. Gill joined in the acceleration before lunch, suggesting the decision could be sooner rather than later. With this push for quicker runs came a skid from Pant seven minutes before the break, but captain Najmul Hossain Shanto knocked him down. Pant hit two more fours in the last over before the break to throw down the gauntlet in the race to a hundred.

After lunch, Pant took his trademark flick behind square from both the quicks and spinners, reaching his hundred in just 118 balls. Gill took a more leisurely approach, in 161 balls, and KL Rahul played a couple of top-notch inside-out drives before the declaration gave Bangladesh an hour to bat before tea.

Zakir Hasan came out full of determination, driving both on the front and back foot and dismissed Mohammed Siraj for a six. With the ball not doing much, the pair remained in search of runs and punished any errors in the length. However, Akash Deep and R Ashwin tested them to no avail.