India’s Yashasvi Jaiswal was proud of a “very special” innings as he inflicted yet more pain upon England with a fine century in the first Test at Headingley on Friday.<\/p>\n
The tourists enjoyed an ideal start to the five-match series, reaching stumps on the opening day in the dominant position of 359-3 as opener Jaiswal (101) and new captain Shubman Gill (127 not out) took a toll of England’s attack.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Gill said at the toss he would have fielded first had the coin come down in his favour.<\/p>\n
However, the decision to insert India by home captain Ben Stokes was branded as “staggering” by former England skipper Michael Vaughan — who spent his entire senior career at Headingley, the headquarters of Yorkshire.<\/p>\n
Not that 23-year-old left-hander Jaiswal, who last year scored a mammoth 712 runs in a home series win over England, was complaining. <\/p>\n
“It was very special, it meant a lot to me,” he said. “I just wanted to get in and do something for my team, for my country and for myself after the work I have put it. I loved it.”<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Reflecting on Gill’s hundred — his first innings at this level since succeeding Rohit Sharma as Test captain, Jaiswal said: “He played amazingly. He was very composed and calm all the time.”<\/p>\n
The last six Tests at Headingley have been won by the team fielding first, but Vaughan was adamant Stokes should have batted.<\/p>\n
“I’m an old-school traditionalist here at Leeds: when the sun is shining, with dry weather, you bat,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I was staggered when he (Stokes) said he was going to bowl,” added Vaughan, commentating on the match for the BBC.<\/p>\n
“Traditions are out the window. You look at the England side and their strength is in the batting.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
“There is inexperience in the bowling at the moment, but Ben clearly had a gut feeling, and sometimes that has worked.”<\/p>\n
Moreover, Vaughan warned there was no guarantee England be on level terms at the end of their first innings given India’s attack is led by outstanding fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah.<\/p>\n
“We won’t know for sure until we see Jasprit Bumrah bowl on it (the pitch),” added Vaughan. “He can bowl you out with anything.<\/p>\n
“Until I see that, I will hold my judgment on how flat this pitch is.”<\/p>\n
England bowling consultant Tim Southee admitted it had been a tough day at the office for the home attack, with the recently retired New Zealand paceman saying: “When you win the toss and bowl you expect to make early inroads, but the Indian openers negotiated that first hour or so pretty well.”<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
He added: “You look at the surface and make the decision based on what you think will give you the best chance.<\/p>\n
“Not all the time do you get it right. But credit to the Indian batsmen, in particular Jaiswal and Gill, they played a couple of great hands.”<\/p>\n
jdg\/kca\/ea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"India’s Yashasvi Jaiswal was proud of a “very special” innings as he inflicted yet more pain upon England…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[43331,748,393,4884,80205,79354,16384,34926,16,15,26790],"class_list":{"0":"post-201202","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-ben-stokes","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-headingley","13":"tag-michael-vaughan","14":"tag-rohit-sharma","15":"tag-shubman-gill","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-yashasvi-jaiswal"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114718519068592496","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}