Dropped catches and over-performing underdogs: Day 1 in Rajkot felt like a throwback to 2012

This is the season of inaugural Tests as Indian cricket ventures into unchartered territories. Along with it come the usual felicitations and memento presentations, as also the question if crowds will turn up. Indore provided an answer in affirmative, and Rajkot did not.

The turnout for the first ever Test match at the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium, with two of their homeboys – Cheteshwar Pujara and Ravindra Jadeja – in the playing XI, was abysmal. It put into focus how Indore filled up because it was an easily accessible stadium to the average fan.

In Rajkot, watching Test cricket in the middle of nowhere, after driving away from town for 30 minutes on the highway to Jamnagar, that too on a working day when you might have priorities like exchanging currency notes, was just not feasible.

Lethargic fielding

The other way to look at this is the crowds were spared a lethargic performance in the field by team India. There is some doubt over whether Alastair Cook’s edge off Umesh Yadav in the second over carried to Virat Kohli at second slip, or not. It doesn’t matter, for he shouldn’t have been at the crease that long.

Cook ought to have been caught at gully off the third ball of the day, bowled by Mohammed Shami. Ajinkya Rahane, of all fielders, got two hands diving to his right and just couldn’t hold on. It became worse when, in the sixth over, Murali Vijay dropped a low catch at first slip off Umesh Yadav. Nineteen-year-old Haseeb Hameed was the beneficiary.

The scorecard should have ideally read 25/2. Instead, it was 47/0 after the first hour’s play, and the opening duo had defied Indian bowlers for 15 overs. “You have to make the first session of a Test match count and send out a strong message. Had we held on to those catches, our spinners would have asked some serious questions to their middle order,” said assistant coach Sanjay Bangar.

There are two ways to look at this statement. One – the Indian bowlers, pacers in particular, have every right to feel miffed. In home conditions, the likes of Shami and Yadav have very little to do. Their brief is to give the new ball a rip and try to etch out a couple of early wickets to put the opposition under pressure, so that the spinners can exploit the situation thereafter.

To their credit, both pacers did what was asked of them, and they were immensely let down. Spinners did their best to salvage the morning session, and that England lost three wickets in the second hour of play signalled a pertinent weakness in their top-order.

And this is where the second point emanates. If those two catches had been held, it is easy to presume that R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Amit Mishra would have given the English middle order hell to cope with.

There’s a difference in the mentality of a batsman when he comes out to bat at 25/2 in the sixth over to when he comes in at 47/1 after the first hour’s play. The bowlers who have taken early wickets get their tails up, the fielders are bouncing about, and there is energy on the field that puts the opposition on the back-foot immediately.

India needed to hold those catches, if only to wake them out of slumber after a month’s break from Test cricket, and Joe Root made sure that he took full advantage of the fact that they did not.

The Joe and Moe Show

The 179-run partnership between Root and Moeen Ali won the day for England. And that is putting it mildly. Usually, when one batsman scores 124 runs and the other gets to 99 not out at stumps, you want to say that it was a brilliant mix of perseverance and stroke-play. That, however, is not true in this case.

Their run scoring, in fact, was an affront to the Indian spinners’ wicket-taking abilities. On a day one pitch, Kohli didn’t know who his best bowlers were. He kept bringing the pacemen back for regular spells, leading to Shami suffering cramps twice. Ashwin bowled 31 overs, Jadeja 21, and neither could take a wicket in the last two sessions. As is the wont with playing three spinners, Amit Mishra (only 10 overs) was severely under-bowled.

It can be argued that the key to their big partnership was batting first on a fresh pitch, something New Zealand didn’t get to do throughout their three Tests. But from a position of 102/3, it is tough to support this theory with anything other than statistics.

And here are the ones that matter – 34 singles, 13 doubles and four threes against Ashwin, Jadeja and Mishra. That’s how Root and Ali played the spinners – they ran hard, rotated the strike and made it tough for them to bowl consistently with the left-right combination.

“We needed to take advantage of a pretty good pitch today. It might change over the course of five days so it was important to start off well. We will look to get close to 500 and eat up time. There are some cracks on the pitch, so it will have variable bounce and will turn as we go on,” said Root after the day’s play.

The time factor

Getting to safety with a tall score is every visiting team’s prerogative in Indian conditions after winning the toss. The surprising bit is about the time factor herein. Thanks to Root and Ali, they are in a position to dictate terms in this match, certainly on day two when the pitch would still be very good for batting. And Cook boasts of a six-bowler attack, enough to put pressure on India who are a batsman short.

That is the thing, though. England’s chances in this series haven’t been talked up as loudly as they ought to, thanks in part to their loss in Dhaka.

They bat deep, have healthy bowling options, and yet in the build-up to this series they played the underdog card to perfection. They had done so four years ago too, after the loss in Ahmedabad. But then they banked on some poor bowling in Mumbai and Kolkata to fashion a stunning turn-around win.

It felt like a throwback to 2012, as India were naively caught out on day one.