In the first Test match between India and England at the Rajiv Gandhi Cricket Stadium in Hyderabad, India faced a humiliating defeat by 28 runs. Following this loss, coach Rahul Dravid is being seen defending his players.
After the loss in the first Test match, Dravid said in a press conference, “The fourth day was quite challenging. We shouldn’t be too harsh just because of today’s (the fourth day of the Test) performance. We had a good start in our first innings. The conditions were favorable until the second day. However, we couldn’t capitalize on the good start. None of our players managed to score a century in the first innings. I think we fell short by 70-80 runs in the first innings. The second innings is always challenging.”
During the first innings, Team India displayed an impressive performance, whether in fielding or batting. While fielding, Team India restricted England to just 246 runs, and in response, they reached a score of 436 runs. However, during the second innings, the England team turned the tables, by scoring 420 runs. As a result, the Indian team needed 231 runs to win. Despite their efforts, the host could only manage to score 202 runs, falling short by 28 runs. In the second innings, Ollie Pope the vice-captain of the English team played a remarkable inning of 196 runs for England, while in bowling, Tom Hartley took 7 wickets.
By starting this series with a win, the England team has sent a message to everyone that they have come fully prepared, and here they will display the same ‘Bazball’ style as they are playing in this approach since Ben Stokes took over the leadership role. The second match of this series will be played in Visakhapatnam from 2nd Feb, and now it is being speculated that the pitch of Visakhapatnam will be more solid compared to Hyderabad, and there will be more turn available here. Due to the slow nature of the Hyderabad pitch, English batsmen were easily able to play sweep and reverse sweep shots, which is why orders have been given to make the pitch solid in Visakhapatnam, and on a solid pitch, sharp turns will be seen. As a result, English batsmen will found it difficult to play sweep and reverse sweep shots.
