- Monday, February 24, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA’S pace battery meant business on the opening day of the first Test against England at Trent Bridge after Joe Root, the captain of the home team, won the toss and elected to bat first on Wednesday (4).
The hosts, who are having concerns over batting of late, were reduced to 61 for 2 at lunch. Soon after, England lost their third wicket at 66 before skipper Root and Jonny Bairstow added valuable 41 runs (at the time of writing this report) to steady the ship.
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Root opted to bat on a dry pitch with a decent covering of grass after winning the toss but ace seamer Jasprit Bumrah, who was not at his best during the World Test Championship final that India lost to New Zealand, was back to form and trapped opener Rory Burns in front of the wicket with a sharp inswinger in the fifth ball of the match for no score. He took the wicket after setting the batsman up with three outswingers.
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The bowler bowled his heart out in his six-over opening spell in which he beat the batsmen several times.
Mohammed Shami, who has a knack of picking up wickets, also bowled well to Zak Crawley (27 off 68) and Dom Sibley (18 off 70) before getting him caught by KL Rahul at short midwicket. Crawley batted well before being dismissed by seamer Mohammed Siraj, who was picked ahead of an experienced Ishant Sharma. He was caught by wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant.
After the tourists wasted one review for a caught-behind in the same over, Siraj induced an inside edge from Crawley’s bat and India captain Virat Kohli reviewed it successfully this time. Sibley survived a close leg before shot off Bumrah at the stroke of lunch and Kohli decided against taking another review and rightly so.
India have gone into the match with four pacers with Shardul Thakur as the fourth one. He was yet to pick a wicket. Ravindra Jadeja was the only spinner that India selected ahead of veteran Ravichandran Ashwin who has been in good form of late and included a five-wicket haul in a county game recently.
