A section of the British media had blamed the pitch at Motera, Ahmedabad, for their disastrous performance in the third Test match, at Motera. They will need to find a new excuse to defend England’s below-par batting performance at the same venue on the opening day of the fourth Test. After Joe Root won a crucial toss, England haplessly folded up for a mere 205 on a pitch that can be called the most balanced surface of the four used in this series. It provided decent pace and bounce, offered early-morning seam movement, and produced a little turn as the day progressed. The versatile Indian bowling adjusted to conditions well, and did not let the visitors maximise on the toss advantage.
In response, India finished the day at 24/1 after losing Shubman Gill early to James Anderson.
The day was yet again dominated by India’s spin twins, Axar Patel and R Ashwin, who shared seven of the 10 scalps. With 4-68, Axar took his tally to 22 wickets in his debut series; Ashwin, on the other hand, took 3-47 to strengthen his position as the leading wicket-taker. Furthermore, Mohammed Siraj, who was picked in the XI ahead of Umesh Yadav, had a pretty decent outing, especially with the new and semi-new ball. He moved the ball around and got rid of Root and Jonny Bairstow with two sharp in-dippers.
England’s approach was quite tentative right from the start. They reinforced their batting by adding an extra batsman, Dan Lawrence. However, in the process they could only accommodate just three frontline bowlers in the XI, which is likely to increase the burden on Ben Stokes and – once again – Root.
Openers Zak Crawley and Dom Sibley made watchful starts. However, as soon as spin was introduced, both lost their footing. Introduced in the sixth over, Axar took just two balls to strike when Sibley inside-edged a straight delivery on to his leg stump. Crawley, on the other hand, wanted to dominate Axar by using his feet and go over the infield. Unfortunately, he couldn’t execute it well, and lobbed a catch to mid-off.
Soon, right after the first drinks break Siraj trapped Root right in-front of the stumps and England were reeling at 30 for 3. From there Bairstow and Stokes steadied the ship and took the side to 74 for 3 at Lunch. Later while Bairstow continued to be circumspect whereas Stokes made his intentions clear when he hit Ashwin for a six on the second ball he faced from the spinner.
Bairstow was given out leg-before to a in-dipper in the fourth over of the second session. Following his departure Stokes found a good ally in Olly Pope as the pair took the visitors past 100. Stokes reached his half-century with an authoritative reverse-sweep and looked set for much bigger innings but he failed to read the line of Washington Sundar’s straight one and was out LBW in the 47th over, which left England tottering at 121 for 5.
Their lower middle-order, however, refused to throw in the towel. Pope was joined by Lawrence and the pair continued to frustrate the Indians. Lawrence particularly looked to go after the bowlers as he added a valuable 74-ball 46 towards the end. Pope was unfortunate when an inside edge hit his back leg and lobbed to short leg. Soon Lawrence got out stumped while coming down track taking on Axar.
There wasn’t much contribution from Ben Foakes, Dominic Bess, Jack Leach and James Anderson as the Indians bowled England out within 75.5 overs and then Rohit Sharma and Cheteshwar Pujara saw them through to the Stumps.
Brief scores:
England 205 (Ben Stokes 55, Dan Lawrence 46; Axar Patel 4-68, R Ashwin 3-47) lead India 24/1 (James Anderson 1-0) by 181 runs at Stumps on Day 1.