England left stunned by India on Test opener after Stokes batting call

It didn’t feel outlandish at the time. When Ben Stokes won the first toss of the series at 10.30am and invited India to bat, his conviction was supported by the stats. The last six Tests in Leeds, after all, had been won by the team bowling first.

Eight long hours later, England were on their knees, staring goggle-eyed at a scoreboard reading 359 for three, with centuries for India’s ridiculously precocious opener Yashasvi Jaiswal and their first-time captain Shubman Gill, as elegant as he was composed. 

As Gill walked off at stumps with 127 to his name, his team-mates waited on the boundary to shake his hand. India have won only three Test series in this country in 93 years of trying, and will remain grateful to their new leader if they can tick off a fourth.

On cricket’s sliding scale of crimes, inserting the opposition and taking three wickets in 85 overs rates curiously highly – more highly, for sure, than folding in a heap after choosing to bat, as India did here four years ago, when they were skittled for 78.

And in England’s defence is the fact that the modern Headingley pitch – as opposed to its up-and-down predecessors of the 1980s and 1990s – seems to improve as the game progresses. In advance, groundsman Richie Robinson told Mike Atherton he would have bowled too; at the toss, Gill said so would he. Stokes, then, was hardly alone.

Yet there was no doubt that the application of the heavy roller three hours before the start robbed the surface of the green hue that had excited social media during the build-up. Nor that the baking sun suggested this was a batting day. At Headingley, they say, you look up, not down. England seemed to have looked too hard at the data.

Above all, perhaps, it was a day when the limitations of their bowling attack were exposed at the start of 10 huge Tests in seven months that will require not just strength in depth, but variety beyond 85mph right-arm seam and orthodox off-spin.

Jofra Archer, Mark Wood and Gus Atkinson are all missing, it’s true. But Chris Woakes had a rare off-day on home soil, and Josh Tongue – used as the battering ram as the field spread – went the distance. Both leaked 4.68 an over.

Brydon Carse earned the wicket of KL Rahul, well caught by Joe Root in the slips shortly before lunch to end an opening stand of 91; had he not overstepped just after the break, his yorker would have removed Jaiswal leg-before for 45. But this was not just Carse’s first home Test: it was his first red-ball game at Headingley, and his rhythm seemed thrown by the slope.

And so, for the second Test in succession, it was Stokes who was the pick of the seamers. His first wicket owed something to luck, debutant Sai Sudharsan edging a swinging delivery down the leg side to Jamie Smith, and trudging off for a four-ball duck to signal lunch. His second, soon after tea, was a thing of beauty, beating Jaiswal on the outside edge, and pegging back off stump.

But Stokes 2.0 is supposed to be a shock bowler, not a stock bowler, and his two spells lasted six and seven overs – one or two longer than ideal. It was a good job Shoaib Bashir produced one of his most controlled performances, or England might have gone for 400.

None of this, though, should detract from the excellence of Jaiswal and Gill, two twenty-somethings at the heart of an Indian team in transition yet apparently unfazed by the retirements of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli.

Jaiswal drove crisply at first, then unleashed his cut, taking 96 balls over his first fifty, and half as many over his second. He has now scored a century on Test debut, a century in his first Test in Australia and a century in his first Test in England. 

Throw in two double-hundreds against Stokes’s side in 2023-24, and it hardly needs saying that India have a special talent. He is just 23, and possesses a Test average of 54, with time and room for improvement. It is a frightening prospect.

Gill, only two years his senior, arrived without a half-century outside Asia since January 2021, but imposed himself from the start, a velvet glove stroking cover-drives with the power of an iron fist. There is no better way to announce your captaincy than with a century on foreign soil. The confidence both men will derive from their instant success is incalculable.

And they are in heady company, since the Indian batsmen who had previously made a Test century at Headingley represent a roll call of some of their greats: Vijay Manjrekar, Tiger Pataudi, Dilip Vengsarkar, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly.

To compound England’s suffering, Rishabh Pant – after launching Stokes down the ground second ball – contributed a typically madcap 65 not out, as 144 flowed in the final session. In the last over of the evening, undeterred by the second new ball, he advanced at Woakes and heaved him into the East Stand for six, ensuring that a day which began with a question mark ended with an exclamation.

More than 20 years ago at Brisbane, on the first day of the Ashes, Nasser Hussain famously inserted Australia, who romped to the close on 364 for two. The next few days will dictate if Stokes’s decision belongs in the same category.