INDIA: 336/6 (Y Jaiswal 179*, S Bashir 2-100, R Ahmed 2-61) vs ENGLAND
What better way to kickstart a weekend than the start of a test match? On the southeast coast of India, in Visakhapatnam, India and England are playing the second test of the 5-match series. A flat road of a pitch compelled the Indian captain to choose to bat first. A good toss to win for India, who would've hoped they made better use of the conditions than what they have ended up doing? Replacing the injured KL Rahul, Rajat Patidar debuts for India, and Kuldeep Yadav and Mukesh Kumar come in for the injured Jadeja and the rested Mohammed Siraj. Big stories from the day include a daddy ton from Jaiswal, a decent debut for Shoaib Bashir, Jimmy Anderson's divine longevity, and of course, another Indian underperformance amidst a fine English comeback.
Right then. India began well. Jimmy Anderson marched in to start the proceedings, and Joe Root began from the other end. Instantly in the second over Jaiswal got going. He sensed two ordinary deliveries from Root and dispatched them to the boundary. James Anderson on the other end was as good as he’s been in the past few years. The pitch didn’t swing a tad bit, and therefore Anderson had been bowling balls with more of a wrist movement, trying to produce swing where there wasn’t. And he was successful to a degree. Rohit missed a lot of deliveries, and so did Jaiswal. Owing to the conditions, Anderson wasn’t lethal, but his degree of discipline and consistency was threatening if the batter made a mistake.
What had started as a steady quick innings, quickly settled down. The Indian batters had respected what Stokes was doing with his field. He set some extraordinary fields, making the batter's life difficult both for scoring runs and not giving away wickets. And it worked out. Rohit edged a nothing-ordinary delivery to leg slip, giving the debutant Shoaib Bashir his maiden wicket, that too of Rohit Sharma. This was another inning where Rohit had gotten dismissed to an ordinary delivery, trying a nothing shot. He had been making the same mistakes he made in the first game. His lack of proactiveness had given Bashir the chance to get a wicket. Batting against spinners demands proactiveness and some intent, not necessarily aggressive intent, but disrupting the spinner's rhythm, line, and length becomes critical. This is what the English batters did so skillfully in the 1st test's 2nd innings. Pope was always looking to produce shots, step out, reverse sweep, absolutely disrupting Jadeja and Ashwin's rhythms. Rohit got too defensive in this innings, and that ultimately cost him his wicket.
What followed was a good 49-run partnership between Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal. Gill looked the best he has in this format in the recent past. His footwork and proactiveness against Bashir and Hartley were commendable. He didn't just sit back in his crease waiting for a delivery to have his name on it. Instead did exactly what the English batters were doing in their 2nd innings in Hyderabad. A few shots he played were brilliant, and his footwork was exquisite. But he made a similar mistake to what he'd done before. Trying to nudge a delivery way outside off. This was already the fifth time James Anderson had gotten Gill out. James Anderson set him up, set the bait, and Gill fell right into it. A bit of an outswinger that Anderson had created by pushing the ball out of his hand by moving the wrist downwards. Below are two photos of a delivery preceding the wicket, and the wicket delivery. The great James Anderson had struck, and Gill had to walk back because of one mistake, a mistake that had put his fine innings to bed.
Shreyas Iyer joined Jaiswal on 41 in the middle who had been fabulous so far. After rocketing off the start line, he had slowed down, respected the good deliveries, and had played conventional test cricket. He left balls alone, put up solid defensive strokes, and did everything needed to thrive in this format. He had adapted and learned a lot from the first test, where he had been a little too aggressive early on. Here, he had learned and was patiently accumulating runs. Iyer got to the crease, and Ben Stokes began what I believe was his best couple hours of captaincy on this tour so far.
The English spinners were tempting Shreyas to hit them on the leg side. Joe Root even bowled a couple of bouncers to him. Shreyas put his front foot on his leg side a lot. He stepped out and moved towards the leg side before he even hit the ball. This is where Stokes' field's mastery showed. There was a leg slip, a short leg, a deep fine leg, a square leg, and a fielder between backward short leg and backward square leg. By doing this, England had ensured Shreyas hit even the leg-side balls towards the off side. And he was watchful of the bouncers for sure. So much so he tried various shots against James Anderson's bouncers, one caught his edge and just missed the stumps. Shreyas was visibly jumpy, and Ben Stokes ensured he didn't get comfortable on the pitch. And England's trap finally worked, they kept going at him with leg and on the stump deliveries, and Hartley suddenly bowled one outside off, Shreyas was in no position to play the shot, with his bodyweight towards the leg side, so he tried to cut the ball, edged it instead, and Foakes caught a difficult catch. Ben Stokes has shown mastery with the captain's hat recently, but I was enormously impressed by the way he set up Shreyas Iyer.
As mentioned, Jaiswal had put his foot on the accelerator once he crossed 60. He was cautious, and watchful, but aggressive throughout the rest of his innings. He hit 3 consecutive boundaries off one of Hartley's overs. No English bowler seemed to trouble him, and despite Stokes setting great fields and trying to set him up, Jaiswal easily put away deliveries. He targeted the covers and scored heavily through the offside. Scoring 107 of the 179 there. He scored 49 runs through the cover drive alone. There was nothing that could stop Jaiswal. He stepped out and hit a six to get to his 100. That tells us everything there is to know about this young man's mindset and temperament. Nobody perhaps personifies fearless cricket in this Indian team as much as Jaiswal does. High praise but Jaiswal seems like a lefty incarnation of Virendra Sehwag. His ability to hit sixes and fours when he pleases whilst not caring about the scorecard is something that makes him unique, and with the kind of approach, he had this innings, nearly unstoppable. I remember watching him smash a six and a four to get to 139 and being awe-struck and impressed. I said to myself a six and a four shouldn't be impressing me after the batter has scored 139 inside 2.5 sessions, but I guess that's just how good Yashasvi Jaiswal is. Today's knock is special, and the cricketing fraternity should watch this innings closely, as we're witnessing the birth of an all-format superstar.
Whilst Jaiswal batted like a dream on one end, Indian batters kept coming in and getting dismissed after getting half-set. There haven't been any single-digit dismissals in the Indian innings, and yet all 6 batters have gotten out between 14-34 runs. Soft dismissals had been the story for India. Patidar, who had looked good on debut, played some fine strokes after getting through early nerves but also got dismissed vaguely. After defending a ball on his front foot, the ball just rolled onto his stumps. Axar Patel, India's third-highest scorer looked in sublime touch before just cutting one directly to point. KS Bharat too got out similarly. On a flat wicket where runs were going to be scored, India will feel like they have missed out. 336 is not a huge total on this pitch. No one other than Jaiswal cashed in, and this inning's fate will depend on Jaiswal's batting tomorrow morning.
England on the other hand will be the happier team. They had bowled extremely well to come back into the test. Though most wickets had been soft dismissals, their bowlers had been good enough on such a flat track. They had troubled all Indian batters barring Jaiswal. And Hartley had looked much more confident than the previous match.
To conclude, this has been Jaiswal's day. He has scored the second most runs on the first day by an Indian batter after Wasim Jaffer's 183 vs Pakistan in 2007. He is backing himself to get the 200 tomorrow, he said in the interview post-stumps. India's inning depends on his performance. England will look to be even better tomorrow and bundle up India quickly. The English are marginally ahead right now, and with no batter left in the Indian batting lineup, the second day's morning session is going to be an exciting passage of play. See you after the day's play tomorrow.
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