England would have walked away with a sigh of relief having two of their most experienced men in the middle at the end of the first day's play at Lord's against India but captain Ben Stokes' injury and the nature of the Lord's track, how it behaved from ball one, would be concerns they would have taken back to the changeroom on Thursday, July 10. Indian captain Shubman Gill and pacer Mohammed Siraj were among those taking a dig at England for playing cautiously, for throwing the Bazball rulebook out of the window, even if only for a bit, as they had two of their most experienced batters in the middle with 251 runs on the board.
Keeping ego aside was the big thing for England on Day 1 of the Lord's Test, which played up and down and was inconsistent much more than anyone anticipated. To their credit, despite some very good bowling from Jasprit Bumrah and Akash Deep in their opening spell, Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett negotiated the first hour very well but as it is with the Bazballers, one lapse of concentration and all the hard work is down in the dumps.
For Duckett, it happened with the leg-stump line from Nitish Kumar Reddy, who eventually dismissed him, trying to pull it away but edging it to the keeper. Duckett's wicket was the lapse for Crawley as two balls later, Reddy got it to zip off the track from the 7-8m length, on the fourth stump line shaping away and the right-hander could do nothing about it.
Then came Joe Root, who had the pressure of not doing enough in the first two Tests. Ollie Pope and Root went through a period of 28 balls without scoring a single run. This wasn't the Bazball everyone knew of, but it was good to see for everyone present at the Home of Cricket to witness malleable Bazballers. Gill labelled it as a return of 'boring' Test cricket. It surely wasn't as fluent for England but boring gave results for them on the opening day.
Pope's fight was brought down by Ravindra Jadeja while Harry Brook got a corker from Jasprit Bumrah as India were chipping at the wickets, not many runs were being scored, but Root was there. So no team was running away with the game but none had it out of their control as well.
The final hour was Root and Stokes, the two men the whole of England hoped for to fire, to score runs and just spend time in the middle, did all of that to get through to the stumps. Root would have definitely liked for the century to be completed on Thursday itself but he would take an unbeaten 99 while Stokes prodding, pushing and struggling to his laboured knock of 39 will give himself a lot of confidence.
The England dressing room will hope that it was just cramps as Stokes was really struggling during the final 20-25 balls he played. For India, even though they were tight, the plays and misses didn't bring a positive result and on a wicket which is doing all sorts of things, they wouldn't want for the opposition to get away.
