During Rahul Dravid’s pre-game inspections, the curator may quip, “There’s a problem in the dressing room; there ain’t one here.” This could happen the next time Dravid walks to the pitch.
India managed to lose three wickets in an impressive opening hour of play despite winning the toss. The pitch has some movement, which is expected with the new ball. Joe Root mishandled an offering from Rohit Sharma, who went on to score an important century, and it very well could have been four before the total reached fifty, and who knows how many more after that.
Rohit’s responses provided a lens through which to view the dismissals. When Rajat Patidar fell, Rohit once again dropped his bat to the ground, faced square, and looked intently at the big screen, wondering if it would reveal anything about the pitch that he hadn’t noticed in person. No, it didn’t.
Left-arm spinner Tom Hartley’s ball turned slightly, but Patidar had pulled himself into a hysterical bubble. The ball slowly inflated to short cover, who would have been there for the uppish drive rather than this, after he had first shaped to get forward and then to cut. In the end, he just offered a strange tap at it without pulling out of the shot in time.
However, Shubman Gill—not Patidar—was the true victim of the first hour’s failure. It all
seemed so inevitable. When he was bowled, edged a couple of times, and trapped on the pad with similar short-of-length skidders from throw downs from Vikram Rathour and Co. one day earlier, the signs were already there at the nets themselves. Gill would experiment with both shorter and longer forward strides. Not much was done there.
Not much in the game worked in real time. He has been depending on his hands to perform the jailbreak for him for some time now due to the persistent issue of weight transfer. But it only took one excellent ball to cast doubt on the situation. Mark Wood hit a nip-backer, but Gill was late and in the wrong line, causing the ball to fly over the stumps. The following ball, a similarly short delivery that touched the off-stump line a little bit, straightened outside off and Gill was pushing at it in the hopes that his hands would save him. They did not, and the outcome was a basic edge.
Rohit’s face furrowed as the crowd let out a gasp. He just stared. Gi
ll was walking past with his head down, taking a quick glance at the large screen before deciding against being so masochistic and carrying on with his stroll.
A moment ago, Rohit appeared slightly taken aback by Yashasvi Jaiswal’s soft dismissal. For some reason, Jaiswal was squared up and his hands betrayed him, hanging the bat out as if it were a slip-catch training session to find Root at first slip. It was the usual back-of-length angler from Wood.
The left-handed Ravindra Jadeja entered at the fall of the third wicket when India chose not to send in either of the two debutants, Sarfaraz Khan or Dhruv Jorel.
More drama unfolded in the second hour as Rohit occasionally teased the English fielders with his attacking impulses. After he had slog-swept Hartley to the midwicket boundary, he attempted to replicate the stroke, but Root struck the unexpected offering when the ball veered off the outside edge and to the left of the first slip.
Subsequently, Rohit attempted a mid-on scoop but was narrowly unsuccessful. Up until then, he was put to the test by Wood and Anderson in very different ways. Anderson repeatedly pounded Rohit on both edges with his curlers around the off stump, which shaped away and came in according to his plan. He was once given out by the umpire after being rapped on the pad, but the DRS revealed a slight bat deflection.
Wood used three men at the deep—a fine-leg, a deep backward square-leg, and a deep square-leg—as part of the bouncers’ strategy against him. On this pitch, Rohit was able to control his pulls, but one ball went straight for his throat and entangled him awkwardly, but the gloved ball landed on the untenanted area on the off.
India managed to get into a minor crisis on a field where they had won the toss and a large total was expected by all. When it comes to field sets and gameplay, England has been flawless. They had two covers for the spinner and a leg slip for the pacers in Patidar. Before moving to a very square and deepish short leg, Jadeja had a leg gully. They didn’t need to make many changes to the field for Gill.
England would regret missing that opportunity. If not, they might have been able to snag a few more before lunch on a strange play during the opening session.
Cheteshwar Pujara was batting in the nets outside the arena, only feet away from where the Indians had retired for lunch.
