Cricket-Bowlers put England on top despite Kohli fifty

The seamer surprised Rohit Sharma, who made 11, with extra bounce and Jonny Bairstow, replacing Jos Buttler behind the stumps, took the catch. Robinson dismissed KL Rahul lbw for 17 and Anderson returned to account for Cheteshwar Pujara to reduce India to 39-3.

Seamers earned England early control of the fourth test against India despite Virat Kohli's fighting fifty on the opening day of the contest at the Oval on Thursday.

Kohli made 50 but India could not really recover from a top-order collapse and were reeling on 122-2 at tea. Rishabh Pant and Shardul Thakur, both batting on four, will hope to lend some respectability to the total after their frontline batsmen let them down.

Put into bat, the tourists found themselves early on the back foot after losing their top three batsmen in the morning session. England captain Joe Root pressed Chris Woakes into service after James Anderson had proved expensive in his wicketless first spell and the bowling change immediately worked.

Playing his first test in 12 months, Woakes struck in his first over to trigger a mini-collapse. The seamer surprised Rohit Sharma, who made 11, with extra bounce and Jonny Bairstow, replacing Jos Buttler behind the stumps, took the catch.

Robinson dismissed KL Rahul lbw for 17 and Anderson returned to account for Cheteshwar Pujara to reduce India to 39-3. The onus was on Kohli to prevent a batting meltdown similar to the third test where they were shot out for 78 en route to an innings defeat.

Luck appeared to favour him too as Kohli got a reprieve on 22 when his England counterpart Joe Root spilled him in the slip after the India captain had edged Woakes. The bowler, in his next over, induced another edge from Ravindra Jadeja and this time Root made no mistake.

Jadeja, who made 10, was sent ahead of Ajinkya Rahane and Pant in a surprising move that did not pay off for the tourists. Kohli took a single off Anderson to bring up his second successive half-century of the five-test series which remains level at 1-1.

Robinson soon had Kohli caught behind, and Craig Overton also tasted success with the wicket of Ajinkya Rahane. India inexplicably left out spinner Ravichandran Ashwin again and brought in seamers Umesh Yadav and Thakur replacing the injured pace duo of Mohammed Shami and Ishant Sharma.

England welcomed back all-rounder Woakes and middle order bat Ollie Pope in place of Sam Curran and Buttler. Buttler missed the match to attend the birth of his second child.