Birmingham, Aug 11: England batsmen plundered runs off the Indian bowling attack on Day 2 of the third Test match at Edgbaston while the visitors were able to pick only three wickets. England added 372 runs to their overnight score of 84 runs on a day that belonged largely to Alastair Cook (182* at the end of Day 2).

Ravi Shastri spoke to www.bcci.tv about the day’s play and what differentiated England from India.

Excerpts from the media interaction:

Alastair Cook’s innings has give England every chance to go three-up in the series

That’s an understatement. I think they are in the driver’s seat; I won’t be surprised if they finish things by Saturday evening.

Kevin Pietersen too played an aggressive and positive innings today. Your thoughts?

Actually all of them did. I thought Ian Bell was very good, very classy in his innings of 34 [runs]. Pietersen plays like he normally does; he likes to come and dominate no matter what the state of the game and today was a perfect platform for him. But one would have to say the entire England innings revolved around Alastair Cook and he is having a dream run at the moment; he once again showed that he has the quality of getting hundreds. He has the ability to play the long innings and he is the kind of player [who] once he gets his eye in, wants to cash in [and] get the big scores - and he did exactly that today. [He] paced his innings beautifully and that was an outstanding achievement.

Barring Praveen Kumar, the other Indian bowlers had an ordinary day with the ball.

I wouldn’t say ordinary day, it was hard work. Let’s face it, the conditions were very good for batting today and India’s attack as compared to that of England [is less threatening]; I think England have a far better attack than India. They have got extra pace, they have got taller bowlers and they make it count. So that’s why I think India will struggle trying to save this Test match.

India’s fielding and catching have proved to be a problem in this series.

[These are] clear signs of a team that’s jaded, it’s tired. They have played a lot of cricket, come straight from the West Indies and it’s beginning to show, there is no doubt about that. Mistakes happening in the field; at times you feel they are running out of ideas even in the planning department, or how to go about the field placing and things of that sort. [These are] clear signs of a jaded team and [its is] clear that they are up against a team who are relentless. They have got India on the mat, England, and they’ve just not allowed [India] to breathe. One opportunity was there in Nottingham when they were 124 for [the loss of] seven [wickets] but they [recovered] from that and they never looked back after that.

So what can India learn from England?

The value of a good opening stand. It just goes to show if you don’t lose wickets to the new ball, then you bring your middle order into play. India, like England, have some very good stroke-players so if they can see the first 15-20 overs through like England did [on Day 2], get 70 [runs] for no loss, 80 [runs] for no loss, then you are talking of scores in excess of 350 [runs] or so because India still have not got 300 runs in the series in any of the innings.