Fifties from KL Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja have taken India into pole position in the opening Test versus England at Hyderabad. Their half-fifty partnership was brought up in no time and England once again looked in desperate need of a wicket. That came in the form of another miscue, this time from the bat of Rahul as he tried putting away a slightly short ball from Tom Hartley, only to miss a century by 14 runs.
Earlier, Yashasvi Jaiswal (80) took India to 119/1 till the draw of stumps on the opening day, but could add just four runs to his overnight score before chipping the ball back to Joe Root. Shubman Gill became Tom Hartley’s maiden Test victim while Shreyas Iyer fell to Rehan Ahmed before Lunch.
Having won the toss and elected to bat, England scored a boundary each in the first eight overs, all by pacers. Zac Crawley and Ben Duckett pounced on every scoring opportunity and coerced Rohit Sharma into having in-out fields. However an astonishing collapse saw England lose three wickets prior to Lunch.
R Ashwin drew first blood for India by trapping Ben Duckett in front. Ollie Pope was pushing forward with hard hands right from the word go. He didn’t cover for the angle and got a thick edge off Ravindra Jadeja. It went low and in front of Rohit at slip, with the Indian captain diving forward to gets his fingers under the ball.
Crawley was looking to be positive against spin and skipped out of his crease to try and take the attack to Ashwin. However, the uppish drive was caught nicely by Mohammed Siraj at mid-off.
On the other side of the interval, Jonny Bairstow copped an unplayable gem from Axar Patel while Joe Root chose the wrong ball to sweep Jadeja as short fine leg settled underneath the top edge. Ben Foakes then edged Axar behind before Rehan Ahmed was outclassed by an off-cutter from Jasprit Bumrah as England crashed to 155/7 from 121/3.
Having started slowly, it was captain Ben Stokes who came to England’s rescue. He targetted Jadeja in particular and reached his fifty in style with back-to-back sixes. The skipper’s invaluable knock was finally brought to an end by a Bumrah delivery that jagged away sharply after pitching to catch Stokes off guard and rattle the stumps.