India take control of the opening Test match against England after an eventful Day 1 at Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium on Thursday, January 25. Indian spinners successfully thwarted England's bazball to dominate the opening day of the five-match Test series at home.
England captain Ben Stokes elected to bat first after winning the toss. England started well by adding 55 runs for the opening wicket and seemed to have successfully deployed a bazball approach but Indian bowlers made a sensational comeback to bowl out the travelling side on 246 in 64.3 overs.
Stokes top-scored with 70 off 88 balls with a couple of crucial partnerships with Tom Hartley and Mark Wood. Stokes' admirable knock helped England put a fighting total at a spin-friendly surface. Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja took three wickets each while Jasprit Bumrah claimed two big wickets for India.
Indian openers also enjoyed a positive start with Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rohit Sharma adding 80 runs for the first wicket in just 12.2 overs. Yashasvi cleared his intentions by smashing a four off Mark Wood on the very first ball of the innings and then thrashed debutant Hartley with two sixes in the second over.
England managed to find a breakthrough with Rohit's wicket in the 13th over. The returning Jack Leach took Rohit's wicket who scored 24 off 27 balls but Jaiswal kept the hammering on and remained unbeaten on 76 off 70 balls. Shubman Gill survived a close LBW call early and scored 14* off 43 balls. India posted 119 for one in 23 overs and are trailing by 127 runs at the end of Day 1 in Hyderabad.
India Playing XI: Rohit Sharma (c), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Ravindra Jadeja, Srikar Bharat (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Axar Patel, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj
England Playing XI: Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes (c), Ben Foakes (wk), Rehan Ahmed, Tom Hartley, Mark Wood, Jack Leach
