The UK Babe Channels Forum

England start their five match test series against India on Wednesday morning at 4am in Rajkot.
A severe test with both bat and ball awaits in a pretty crammed 5 match schedule before Christmas.

Lets hope England can perform well.

In the new year 3 ODIs and 3 Twenty-Twenty matches will also be played.

England won the toss and are batting first. The side includes 3 spinners and the youngest ever debutant opener for England: Alastair Cook, Haseeb Hameed, Joe Root, Ben Duckett, Moeen Ali, Ben Stokes, Jonny Bairstow, Chris Woakes, Adil Rashid, Stuart Broad, Zafar Ansari.

A very positive day for England finishing on 311/4. It's been a long time since a visiting team had such a good first day on a tour of India.

England have carried on the good work this morning, with an excellent stand of 99 between Stokes and Bairstow, ended just before lunch as Bairstow departs for 46. That made England 442/6 and at lunch the score has moved on a little to 450/6. A great session for England.

and I assume it's been a fair time since we last won a test series in India too I think it is one of the most testing test tours of all

England 537 all out. A great effort but also helped by some ragged fielding by India. 3 centuries - Stokes 128, Root 124 and Ali 117.

Quite a flat pitch.
The seam bowlers and to some degree the spinners on both sides struggling to get much out of the surface. Reluctant to call it a draw this early though as collapses late in the game can be a feature of test matches in India as the pitch deteriorates.
England did what they had to do in the first innings.
Wickets will be hard earned at this stage of the game though I suspect.

Lunch on the 3rd day and India are 162/1. Good session for them and England's bowling hasn't looked too threatening so far.

Close of play India 319-4

Nice to get a couple of late wickets on day three.
England stuck to their task and did not let the scoring rate run wild. Still can't really tell which way this match is heading. Late day four and the whole of day five could be where all the drama occurs.