Before the start of the England tour of India 2021, most of the cricket fraternity had written off the visiting side predicting a 4-0 victory for the home team. India’s Test series victory with a second-string side in Australia and the return of their full-time captain Virat Kohli had added a lot of weight to those predictions!
However, England proved everyone wrong by thumping India in the first Test of the 4-match series in Chennai by a thumping margin of 227 runs. Visiting captain Joe Root led the charge with the bat scoring a double hundred (218 runs) in the first innings of what was his 100th Test match.
“Root sure is one of England’s greats. He will probably end up breaking all records, he will probably go past Sir Alastair Cook’s 161 Test matches and probably tally of runs as well,” Nasser Hussain wrote in his column for a leading sports website.
“He is in great nick, only 30 years old, and if you did a list of all-time England batting greats – the ones I have seen anyway – you’d have to have Root with Cook, Graham Gooch and Kevin Pietersen. I would say he is arguably England’s best-ever player of spin, the way he sweeps spin away is outstanding to watch,” he added.
In the first Test, England won the important toss on a flat pitch and made India work very hard to get wickets. In the process, they piled up runs and took India’s victory out of the equation going into the Day 5 of the Test match. And they went for the full kill successfully defending 381 runs on the final day.
Moreover, the victory in the first Test is England’s sixth straight victory playing away from home. This streak started in January 2020 where they won all the 3 Tests in South Africa. Prior to the tour of India, England won both the 2 Tests in Sri Lanka and the victory in the first Test against India was their 6th straight overseas Test victory. The second Test match between India and England will also be played in Chennai beginning from Saturday (Feb 13).
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