England started their tour of India on a bright note as they registered a massive 227-run victory over the hosts in the first Test in Chennai on Tuesday. It was skipper Joe Root who starred for the visitors with a double century in the first innings whereas Ben Stokes and Dominic Sibley registered scores of 82 and 87 respectively. That helped England to put on a massive total of 578 runs on the board.
India in reply could muster only 337 runs in their first innings. Rishabh Pant top-scored with 91 while Washington Sundar and Cheteshwar Pujara played fighting knocks of 85* and 73 respectively. The nature of the track started changing drastically from the third day and England were bowled out for 178 in their second innings.
India thus needed 419 runs to win the match but the wicket had become too tough to bat on, in the last day and a half. In response, the hosts were bowled out for just 192 runs with skipper Virat Kohli scoring 72 of those. He was India’s last ray of hope but a peach of a delivery from Ben Stokes cleaned him up and thus brought an end to his fighting knock. There were many records broken and set in this match. Without further adieu, let’s have a look at them.
- Joe Root’s score of 218 is the fifth-highest by any English cricketer against India in Tests. With 1639 runs, he is also the third-highest run-scorer for England in Tests against India.
- Root also became the only player in the history of Test cricket to score a double century in his 100th Test. The next best is 184 by Inzamam ul Haq against India in 2005. Apart from them, there is only one other batsman who has made more than 140 in a single innings of his 100th Test. That is Gordon Greenidge’s 149 in 1990.
- Ravichandran Ashwin bowled 55.1 overs in the first innings against England. That’s the most number of overs he has bowled in an innings in his Test career so far. The previous highest was 53 overs against Australia at Adelaide in 2012.
- Rishabh Pant registered his third consecutive score of 90 or more in home Tests. He scored 91 in the first innings. Previously, he had identical scores of 92 against West Indies at Rajkot and Hyderabad respectively during the 2018 series.
- Virat Kohli went without scoring a hundred once again. This is the 32nd innings he went without scoring an international hundred. It is the longest streak that he has gone without scoring a century. Also, the last time he made a hundred in the fourth innings was in Adelaide in 2014.
- Ben Stokes dismissed Kohli for the fourth time in Test cricket since 2016. Only one pacer, Pat Cummins, has dismissed him more (5) during this period in Test cricket.
- India have lost thrice to England at home since 2012. Against all other teams combined, they have lost only once.
- This was England’s sixth Test match in Asia under Joe Root’s leadership and England have won all of them.