Joe Root defies conventional wisdom

Wriddhiman Saha collected the first ball of the day with his fingers pointing skywards. The second ball was a lot shorter but this time Saha collected it around his waist. Later in the same over, one ball hit the lower half of Alastair Cook's bat and the ball bounced a few times en route to the fielder at slip. If there is variable bounce as early as the first over, you know what to expect for the five days. Expect the lines to be a lot straighter for faster bowlers and most wickets to come through leg-before and bowled.

India grassed a few catches in the first half hour of the game. Catching in the slips is an art and, at the highest level, it is assumed that you have mastered it and thereby earned the right to stand in the slips. But pitches in the subcontinent pose a challenge of a different kind. Since you are not sure about the bounce, you are best advised to get closer to the bat. It is better to drop the catch than for the ball to drop in front of you. So, for the same bowler, you would stand four steps closer in Rajkot than at Old Trafford. But the closer you get to the bat, the shorter the reaction time and the tougher the catch becomes. There might be less bounce on subcontinent pitches, but the pace off them is not radically different from the pace off pitches around the world. Given this, you might be a little less harsh the next time you see a catch dropped in slips in this series.

R Ashwin started from over the stumps to right-handed batsmen, bowled full and maintained an attacking line outside off. It did not work. On a pitch that is not offering anything substantial from the surface, the line outside off ceases to be as threatening as it is on a turning pitch. It is easier to counter the occasional lateral movement off the surface. That is why Ashwin went around the stumps, which enabled him to expose both edges. Suddenly every ball started finishing within the stumps, and that led to Haseeb Hameed's wicket. Moreover, Ashwin's economy also improved - he did not concede a single boundary to right-handers off the first 44 balls he bowled to them from around the stumps, conceding only 17 runs off those deliveries.

The ball has started reverse swinging and both Umesh Yadav and Mohammad Shami have exploited it well. But this particular ball pitches and changes direction alarmingly, and hits Joe Root on the body. While reverse swing is par for the course in dry conditions, movement off the surface is not, especially on the first day. But this pitch at Rajkot is a little different, with cracks running all through the 22 yards. The ball in question must have hit one of these cracks and deviated. Expect the cracks to widen as the sun beats down on this pitch. That will bring seamers into the picture.

Root hit ten boundaries against spinners, and not even one boundary was while stepping out till he reached his century. There was only one boundary through the sweep and that too was off a full toss. Aren't we told that the only way to succeed against spin in India is to either step out to smother spin or sweep as often as you can? Granted, it is the first day of a Test match on a decent pitch, but Root has shown that it is possible to succeed with a different game plan. His driving was meticulous, with a long forward stride and the precise transference of body weight at the point of impact.

During India's last tour to England, Ishant Sharma and co. had exploited Moeen Ali's discomfort against bouncers. So much so that it felt that the moment he walked out to bat, bowling a bouncer was the obvious thing. He tried ducking, fending and attacking them, but was not successful with any of these approaches. That led one to believe that it would be worth trying the same ploy again but it did not happen today. Out of the first 30 balls that Moeen faced, 18 were bowled by the seamers and yet there wasn't a single bouncer whistling past his nose. Later, of course, the absence of a fully fit Shami made it impossible to have an extended spell of bouncers.