India took the last seven England wickets for 45 runs to bowl the hosts out for 183 after they won the toss and batted in tough batting conditions. India’s openers knocked off 21 of those without being separated. Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami, the two senior bowlers in the absence of Ishant Sharma and R Ashwin, took seven wickets between them in 37.4 overs. Once again, Joe Root looked like a level above his batting team-mates, scoring 64 assured runs off 108 balls in an innings that went at 2.78 an over.
England will need to look at five or six wickets that they didn’t make India work hard enough for. It started early as Rory Burns fell for Bumrah’s two-card trick in the first over in a hectic start.
India the country did not even have time to properly debate the exclusion of Ashwin – who’s in the form of his life – from the XI, to find a combination that fit the conditions and addressed India’s long tail. Ishant had failed a fitness test in the morning.
Bumrah took five balls to change the talking point. Four of them moved gently away from the left-hand opener Rory Burns before the fourth one swung back in. In 2018, when Bumrah got Keaton Jennings in the same fashion, it might have been a surprise, but by now, experts argue, you have to be expecting that delivery as a left-hand batter and not get beaten as comprehensively as Burns did.
Zak Crawley and Dom Sibley saw off the new ball with a hard-fought 42-run stand in nearly 21 overs, but Rishabh Pant managed to convince his captain to take a second review in the same Mohammed Siraj over to get the wicket of the fluent Crawley. Three balls after an enthusiastic review for a catch off the inside edge and pad cost India, Pant implored Kohli to take another, similar review. This time the inside edge was taken.
This was minutes before lunch, but in the intervening overs, Root got away with three boundaries in an over – one of them streaky – and also looked to attack Bumrah in the final over before the break.
After lunch, India operated with Bumrah and Shami, but the line of attack shifted a bit, almost like they decided the ball wasn’t doing much and they needed to get back to the leg trap they had set for Australia in Australia. Soon enough, Sibley got a leading edge to a ball sliding down leg, offering short midwicket a catch. A “nothing wicket” on the surface, but India did have a field for straight lines: a short-forward square leg to go with the short midwicket.
From 66 for 3, England found their most assured batting period with Rot and Jonny Bairstow batting together for 22.5 overs. Root showed more attacking intent than any other specialist batter, scored faster than all of them and was more in control than any of them. Bairstow got comfortable as time wore on, but in one over split by the tea break, England were rocked back significantly.
Full report to follow
Sidharth Monga is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo
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