5 areas where England batsmen outdid India in the first innings of the Rajkot Test
When England lost to Bangladesh in Dhaka a week back, a few memes started circulating on social media like Facebook on how the Indian spinners too would have a feast in the five-match series. But two days into the first Test at Rajkot those memes have disappeared.
And why wouldn’t they? The same English batsmen who fell prey to the likes of Mehedi Hasan Miraz and Shakib Al Hasan on rank turners in Bangladesh have suddenly come out all guns blazing on a greenish looking surface here.
After the first two hours of the first Day where India picked up two wickets, it was all about the Englishmen who batted as if they were playing on concrete pitches. The conditions were quite similar though as the Indian bowlers sweated it out to take wickets. By the end of the Day, England were 311/4 with Joe Root bagging a hundred.
On Day two also, they started off quite well with two more of their batsmen namely Mooen Ali and Ben Stokes getting to their centuries as they piled on more misery on the Indians. England finally were bowled out for 537 after 159.3 overs.
Here, in this article we look at the areas where England outdid India to go on and get such a huge score.
#1 Nullifying the threat of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja
Before the series started there was a lot of talk around the England batting and if they were equipped enough to deal with the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja on turning Indian wickets. Well, the wicket didn’t turn and Ashwin especially wasn’t that effective.
Jadeja was the pick of the bowlers for India but he also gave away 86 runs for his three wickets. The last time Ashwin gave away more than a hundred runs in an innings he had also picked up six wickets which were against New Zealand at Kanpur in September. But here he was smashed for 167 runs and was able to pick up only 2 Kiwi scalps.
And though his partner in crime Jadeja picked up three wickets, he wasn’t at his sharpest. More often than not he had difficulty in finding his radar which allowed England batsmen to get off the hook.