Virat shines but India fails

NP NEWS NETWORK

Edgbaston

Despite captain Virat’s outstanding batting performance, India lost the first test match of five match test series at Edgbaston, Birmingham by 31 runs. England’s debutant allrounder Sam Caran was adjudged as man of the match for his all-round performance.

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The match was evenly poised on the day 4 of the test match when India needed 80 runs to win, where as England needed 5 wickets to win the Test match. In the morning session England’s pacer James Anderson took the wicket of wicketkeeper-batsmen Dinesh Kartik.

After that wicket a partnership was built between Captain Virat Kohli and allrounder Hardik Pandya. But after the wicket of Indian Captain the tail could not stand and in the end India lost the match by 31 runs.

After wining the toss England captain Joe Root choose to bat first. Which didn’t turn out to be a good decision as the team could not even reach 300 mark. Captain root made his impact by scoring 80 runs which was highest from that inning. India’s bowling was on the top of England batsmen. Ravichandran Ashwin took 4 wickets while fast bowler Mohmad Shami took 3 wickets. In the 2^nd inning Ishant Sharma took a 5 wicket haul.

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India’s only batting star was Captain Virat Kohli, who scored 200 runs combined in both the innings. No other India batsmen could put impact on English bowlers.

After the match Virat said, “First of all, it was a great game of cricket for all those watching at home and here in the stadium. Glad to be a part of such an exciting Test match; there were a couple of moments when we came back. A team like England doesn’t let you do it every day, they were relentless and they made us work very hard for our runs. It sets up the series nicely and gives us what we need to do going forward. Our shot selection could have been better.”

“We definitely need to apply ourselves better with the bat, but England came back superbly. We need to take the positives and move forward. We can be proud as a team to start against England in England the way we have. There is a lot to learn from the lower order in the first innings, Ishant and Umesh got stuck in the middle. Ishant showed character here, Umesh hung around with Hardik again. There is no hiding from this game; we need to be positive, relentless and whatever the feelings are would come out now in no time. We need to take the negatives out and build on the positives as we go on.”

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When India toured England in 2014 they out outperformed by English team in all three aspects of the game. But this time India has given a fight back, India would have won the match if they could gone through with the tail of England team early as the tail added more than 100 runs. While on the other hand India’s tail was wrapped up by England bowling very easily.