Key events
7th over: India 15-0 (Jaiswal 9, Rohit 6) Anderson hits Rohit on the pad with a lovely nipbacker. England go up for LBW but it’s too high and Anderson isn’t interested in a review. The ball also deflected to slip, though there was no inside edge.
That’s another pretty good over from Anderson, the first maiden of the match. It means the first half of his figures are also his age: 4-1-5-0. He couldn’t be expensive if he tried.
6th over: India 15-0 (Jaiswal 9, Rohit 6) Rohit fails to punish a Root full toss, cracking it straight to deep midwicket for a single, and then Jaiswal cloths a long hop straight to mid-off. Just three runs off the last three overs, though there are no signs of India’s openers getting frustrated. They know there should beheaps of runs out there in the first half of the game.
Just one more thing before we leave England’s match in Vizag in 2016. This story, from Vic Marks’ preview, bears repetition.
Inside the ground the players’ dressing rooms are at the Vizzy End, a name that stems from the Maharajah of Vizianagram; he was a multimillionaire and a very poor player, which did not prevent him from captaining India in England in 1936.
Five years earlier Vizzy’s vast wealth had persuaded Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe to go to India to play for his team. In England he averaged eight in the three Test matches of 1936 – and he was not a bowler; the series was lost after he had sent home one of the most gifted players, Lala Amarnath, for “disciplinary reasons”. If he had kept himself off the pitch he might have been remembered as one of the great benefactors of Indian cricket.
In later life he joined the BBC commentary team as a guest for one series, without gaining universal approval. He had a passion for hunting tigers and on air he spoke at length of how he snared his victims. “Really,” said Rohan Kanhai, the great West Indies batsman, “I thought you just left a transistor radio on when you were commentating and bored them to death.”
5th over: India 14-0 (Jaiswal 9, Rohit 5) I’d need to double check, but I think the last time a quick bowler aged 41 and over took a Test wicket was on 29 March 1948, when Gubby Allen (aged 45!) trapped Frank Worrell LBW in Jamaica.
England need to strike early or it could be a very long day. Anderson has started pretty well and is getting a little bit from the pitch, mainly bounce actually. Rohit feels for a lifting outswinger and is beaten, and it’s another quiet over. Wickets or not, Anderson pretty much always give England control.
4th over: India 13-0 (Jaiswal 9, Rohit 4) Root starts around the wicket to the right-hander Rohit, with a slip and short leg in place. Just a single from the over. Rohit was the pacemaker in the World Cup, but in the Test team that’s Jaiswal’s job.
3rd over: India 12-0 (Jaiswal 9, Rohit 3) This is the Vizag Test of 2016 that Ali Martin mentioned. We may get a repeat this time, but one thing’s for sure: Ben Duckett won’t be getting a 16-ball duck.
Anderson continues. Imagine being 41 and wanting to bowl in India. His second over is much better, with both batters beaten outside off stump. Inbetween, Rohit times a nice square drive for three. There was some encouraging bounce as well.
2nd over: India 9-0 (Jaiswal 9, Rohit 0) Joe Root takes the new ball for the second consecutive innings. Jaiswal makes a statement by clubbing his first and fourth balls to the cover boundary. The first was a bit risky, slapped in the air, but the second was a fine shot.
1st over: India 1-0 (Jaiswal 1, Rohit 0) Jimmy Anderson, 41 and with a fresh bit of juice in his hair, has three slips for Yashasvi Jaiswal. He starts with a couple of balls down the leg side, and most of the over is slightly too straight.
Ali Martin
Looks a good toss to have won, this one. Can’t help thinking back to 2016 when India did the same, Virat Kohli made 248 runs in the match and they won by 246. Gulp. No Kohli here, of course, but a big chance for India to get themselves back into the series. Will be interesting to see their approach, mind you … a lot of sweeping/reverse sweeping in the nets before one, which is not a shot they typically go to … has Bazball got in their heads?
I personally don’t see why it should have; hold their catches in Hyderabad, bat a bit better on the third morning, and they would have cruised to 1-0. Other memories of 2016 include a dog running on to the outfield, ahem, fertilising a spot by mid-wicket and an early tea being called with both Chesteshwar Pujara and Kohli in the nineties. Tried to find said pooch for an interview this week but no joy.
It feels like a 320 for three kind of day, doesn’t it. First-innings runs will be vital. Mind you, I said that last week.
This is a cracking stat from our sworn enemies friends at Cricinfo Joe Root (11,447) has more Test runs than the entire Indian team (10,336).
Ben Stokes said England would have batted as well. “New game, new week: we know India will come back hard.
The teams
India have made three changes: Rajit Patadar and Kuldeep Yadav come in for the injured KL Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja, while Mukesh Kumar replaces Mohammad Shami.
India Jaiswal, Rohit (c), Gill, Iyer, Patidar, Patel, Bharat (wk), Ashwin, Kuldeep, Bumrah, Kumar.
England Crawley, Duckett, Pope, Root, Bairstow, Stokes (c), Foakes (wk), Ahmed, Hartley, Bashir, Anderson.
India win the toss and bat
And why not.
“Looks a good pitch,” says Rohit Sharma. “The pitch is gonna do its thing, we have to playh good cricket to win the game. We need to move on from Hyderabad – we’ve spoken about certain things, we batted well in the first innings but didn’t show the same intent in the second innings. We understand what went wrong and hopefully we can correct those mistakes.”
The pitch
So, will it be 2-0 or 1-1 after this Test? Well, it might be 1-0: the consensus in Vizag is that Dinesh Karthik is one handsome m- the pitch looks like a belter.
Rajat Patidar has been handed his Test cap by Zaheer Khan, so he will replace KL Rahul in the Indian side. He’s 30 years old, naturally aggressive – particularly against spin – and recently scored a mighty 151 against England A. In short, he can really play. Of course he can, he’s been picked by India FFS.
I remember being in Brisbane once during the Ashes… when Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen were about to resume England’s innings. Cook was in the zone and not really talking to anyone, but KP came over and we chatted for a couple of minutes. I told him I was about to go to Sri Lanka with England Lions and he said: “Oh, spin. You’ve just got to pick the length and that’s it.” And with that he put on his helmet and his gloves and went out to face Mitchell Johnson. I loved the certainty of that statement, and it has always stuck with me.
Sir Alastair Cook on England’s Hyderabad victory
England announced their team yesterday, with Jimmy Anderson and Shoaib Bashir, 20, replacing Mark Wood and the injured Jack Leach. England’s four specialist bowlers have 186 Test caps between them:
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183 Jimmy Anderson
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2 Rehan Ahmed
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1 Tom Hartley
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0 Shoaib Bashir
Before the series Brendon McCullum called India “the land of opportunity”, and England have given themselves a helluvan opportunity to do something extraordinary. Even so early in a five-match series, this match feels like a biggie. Either England will go 2-0 up, something no team has done in India since Australia in 2004-05, or India will level the series and grab the momentum ahead of the return of Virat Kohli, Mohammad Shami, Ravindra Jadeja and KL Rahul.
England may yet lose this series 4-1, and Hyderabad 2024 might be another red herring like Chennai 2021. Such trepidation is natural, given India’s irresistible brilliance at home over the past decade, but it’s mixed with tentative optimism that England could actually… no, we’re not ready to say it yet. Maybe if they go 2-0 up.