First Test vs India

 England won toss and fielded which seemed questionable at the time and ridiculous by tea.  Two young Indian batsmen made excellent centuries but would they have survived Jimmy Anderson with the new ball?  With Woakes having a rare average day, apart from the captain our bowlers seemed toothless, lacking in skill and guile, which is concerning.

Day two - Are England back in the game?  They’d argue they were never out of it.  Josh Tongue inspired an Indian collapse of 7-41 but they still set an imposing target of 471.  Crawley was out early but England had a comfortable day with the bat and Pope silenced the likes of MVP with a ton.
I don’t dislike Michael Vaughan really but since entering the media he’s made a habit of talking bollocks.  His latest nugget being “Jasprit Bumrah is the best pace bowler of all time.”  Bumrah is without doubt an excellent cricketer but come on Vaughan, surely one attribute of a great fast bowler is the fitness and strength to play all five matches in a series if necessary?  Of the modern bowlers I think Rabada is the best but this could be bias because he reminds me of Malcolm Marshall who is the greatest I’ve seen.

Anyway, following this England continued to build a competitive total led by 99 from Brook and contributions from the tail got us within six of India’s total but I couldn’t help thinking with a bit of thought it could have been more.  India batted again and accumulated runs while England nabbed a couple of wickets
Day four saw excellent batting from Rahul and Pant who hit his second ton of the match and it looked like the game was swinging decisively towards India but after the centurions were out they collapsed again, 7 for 79 this time with Tongue picking up more wickets.  England survived until the end and had a target of 350 to chase on the fifth day.  This would have seemed impossible only a few years ago but not now, ridiculous as it seems I expect them to do it.
The fifth and final day, England’s openers set the perfect platform, Duckett was brilliant and England strolled to a five wicket win with Root unbeaten on 50+ at the end.

This isn’t even surprising any more, playing at home England have always been difficult to beat (since the nineties at least) but Stokes’ England only lose when they fuck it up for themselves.  At times we were only just hanging on in this match so to go out and win comfortably at the end is an awesome performance.  On this form England is without doubt the best test team in the world.  How will India go from here?  On the whole they played a decent match apart from collapses and dropped catches, maybe that was the difference between the teams?  I wonder how failing to defend 371 will affect the mind set for the rest of the series, this series may not be close, dare I say 5-0?