With half-centuries from KL Rahul (86 runs) and all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja (81 not out), India scored 421 runs for seven wickets and took a lead of 175 runs in the first innings at stumps on the second day of the first cricket test against England on Friday.
Till the end of the day’s play, Jadeja is playing on 81 runs and Akshar Patel is playing on 35 runs. The Indian team, which came out to play at 119 runs for one wicket in the morning, lost two wickets each in all three sessions. Tom Hartley and Joe Root took two wickets each for England.
England’s first innings was reduced to 246 runs on the first day. On the very first day, Indian spinners destroyed England’s baseball and bundled them out for 246. R Ashwin and Jadeja took three wickets each.
Among fast bowlers, only Jasprit Bumrah got success and he took two wickets in his name. Akshar Patel also got two wickets. Mohammad Siraj could not show any special feat and also proved to be expensive. He got only 4 overs bowling.
Despite the lead, the Indian team will be disappointed that despite staying at the crease, none of its batsmen could score a century. Rahul showed excellent ‘timing’ during his 123-ball innings and chose his shots carefully. It seems that his confidence has increased a lot after his century against South Africa in Centurion earlier this month.
The way Rahul faced the leg spin of Rehan Ahmed was brilliant in which he hit two sixes in four balls. Rahul hit the first six over the ‘sitescreen’ and then hit the second over mid-wicket. This batsman dominated by showing the perfect technique to negate the effect of the difficult pitch.
But all the hard work of this player went in vain when while trying to pull the ‘half tracker’ of left-arm spinner Tom Hartley, he was caught by the only fielder standing at deep midwicket, Ahmed. Due to this, he also missed the chance to achieve the feat of scoring a century in the 50th Test.
But due to Jadeja’s ability to take risks at the right time and score runs, the team continued to add runs. Shreyas Iyer (35 runs) seemed to face a lot of trouble during his 63-ball innings, especially against fast bowler Mark Wood who troubled him with his short pitched balls.
The pitch was slow but there was enough spin on it to take advantage. Apart from the makeshift Joe Root, three spinners could not succeed in stopping the Indian batsmen from adding runs. The day did not start well for India. The team lost the wicket of opener Yashasvi Jaiswal (80 runs) in the first over of the day itself.