Key events
88th over: India 368-3 (Gill 132, Pant 69) Pant charges Carse, tries to launch him onto the air traffic control systems and under-edges the ball on the bounce to Smith.
Carse then tries to tickle Pant’s ribs, only for Pant to see his tickle and raise it with a tickle down the leg side for four. A pretty good over from Carse ends with a fuller delivery that beats the edge. Whatever happens this summer, I think Carse will be England’s most important bowler in Australia (unless they recall Oliver Edward Robinson, and I really need to let that go).
87th over: India 364-3 (Gill 132, Pant 65) Chris Woakes’ second ball, slightly full, is timed exquisitely through extra cover by Gill. I think he just owned the weekend with that. It was a glorious, and the boundary makes this his highest Test score.
“It may come as a surprise that there is at least one neurosurgeon (currently in the middle of a conference) in far off Patna in Bihar, India who’s glued on to the OBO,” writes Prasad Krishnan. “I’m sure there would be many more in varied parts of the world surreptitiously tuning in between performing craniotomies and laminectomies while maintaining an air of gravitas that fools people into thinking we are the ‘all work and no play’ types.
“As regards neural pathways I can say with a fair degree of certainty there are none specific to batters that get activated by having captaincy thrust on them.”
So what changes? There must be something because so many captains score runs in industrial quantities at the start. It may be something painfully obvious; if so, please excuse my abundant ignorance.
86th over: India 360-3 (Gill 128, Pant 65) A quiet over from Brydon Carse to start the day. I can’t decide what to make of Carse’s performance yesterday – there were plenty of very good balls but also too many loose ones. He was probably a nose ahead of Woakes and Tongue though.
It’s another sweltering morning in Leeds, and the Met Office forecast is for some desperately hard yakka if England don’t take early wickets.
In the unlikely event that there’s a neuroscientist in the building, I have a question. Why? Why me? Why did I get this brain? We know that many batsmen-captains are at their most productive in their first year in charge; then their output starts to taper off as the captaincy wears them down.
That’s consistent with our understanding of human nature: captaincy both empowers the batter and sharpens their focus in the middle, and the history of cricket confirms that Shubman Gill’s lovely hundred yesterday shouldn’t have come as a surprise. But do we have any idea what is going on neurologically? Why is their focus sharper? How does a greater sense of responsibility manifest at the crease? What neural pathways does it change? And, most importantly of all, has anyone actually read this far?
Test Match Special overseas link
“Literally everyday on the OBO, someone asks for help locating the TMS link for overseas listeners,” writes Toby Peggs. “I made this handy video to explain how to find it. Feel free to post it the next time someone asks!”
Tremendous stuff, thanks Toby. My work here is done.
When you win the toss at Headingley – cliche klaxon – you’re supposed to look up (at the weather) rather than down at the pitch. England did neither: they looked backwards at the data, which told them the last six Tests in Leeds have been won by the team bowling first. A seventh really would be magnificent.
Ali Martin’s day one report
This being Headingley, so often a scene of the absurd and a ground where the last six Tests have been won by the side who bowled first, England will refuse to believe they are snookered. By the same token, inviting a team to bat first under clear skies and then having them dominate all three sessions was clearly suboptimal. The air was soupy, the outfield fast, and England failed to locate the Headingley length.
Preamble
Ever have one of those days you wish you could live all over again? England’s decagon of destiny, as nobody is calling it, got off to a honking start yesterday when India strolled to 359 for three after being put into bat by Ben Stokes.
As ill-conceived as Stokes’ decision was, we should remember that India would have done the same. The main reasons for India’s dominance were the brilliance of Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill, poster boys for a new India, and a rusty, erratic performance from England’s three main seamers.
Chris Woakes, Brydon Carse and Josh Tongue all went at more than 4.3 per over, a situation that in some cultures would be described as sub-optimal. England will surely bowl better today, buoyed as much as anything by precedent: they are the only team in Test history to win two games after bowling first and conceding 500.
Right now, although India are in complete control, there is a credible path to victory for England. Not sure that’ll be the case if Rishabh Pant is still batting at lunch. If Pant tees off today, England may have to countenance something even more disgusting than defeat: a draw.
