Bangladesh pacers, clouds spoil India's party as hosts attempt clever trick in spin-friendly Chennai

Team India had ended their last home season with a commanding 4-1 Test victory over England, handing the Ben Stokes-led and Brendon McCullum-coached side their first series defeat of the ‘Bazball’ Era.

Six months later, India’s start to the 2024-25 season couldn’t be more different with the Rohit Sharma-led home team staring at the prospect of getting shot out for less than 200 at one point on Day 1 of the first Test against Bangladesh in Chennai.

In the build-up to the opening game of Bangladesh’s first tour of India in nearly five years, the home team opted for a red-soil pitch at Chepauk, with the ground staff shaving off the grass cover a day before the match got underway.

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The ground staff’s decision that was made at the request of India captain Rohit Sharma and head coach Gautam Gambhir did raise a few eyebrows since the MA Chidambaram Stadium is a venue that has traditionally favoured spin.

India, for one, have been cautious about their batter’s ability to play spin ever since they suffered a 0-2 series defeat in the ODI leg of the tour of Sri Lanka, Gambhir’s first since his appointment as head coach. Rohit and Co were also wary of the fact that spin has been Bangladesh’s strength over the years and had played a key role in their historic 2-0 sweep of the Test series in Pakistan before they arrived in India.

The decision to switch red-soil wicket instead of a predominantly black-soil wicket favouring the slower bowlers was also taken keeping in mind Team India’s tour of Australia later this year, where they play a marquee five-Test series against the home team with the Border-Gavaskar Trophy as well as a place in the World Test Championship on the line.

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Bangladesh’s pace unit takes India by surprise

India had accounted for Bangladesh’s spin factor as well as the Australia tour by their choice of wicket as well as their team selection, going with three pacers and two frontline spinners in their XI — a rare move for the Indian team in a home Test.

What Rohit and Co certainly did not expect on the opening day of Bangladesh’s multi-format tour was being challenged by their pace attack under overcast conditions in the Tamil Nadu capital.

It wasn’t just spinners Mehidy Hasan Miraz and Shakib Al Hasan and batters Mushfiqur Rahim and Litton Das who had starred in Bangladesh’s Test series triumph in Bangladesh. Pacers Hasan Mahmud and Nahid Rana had also chipped in in the second Test in Rawalpindi, sharing nine wickets between them in the second innings to bundle the hosts out for a paltry 172.

Read | Who is Hasan Mahmud, the Bangladesh pacer troubling India on Day 1?

And Mahmud, for one, had carried on in Chennai from where he had left off in Rawalpindi, rattling India’s top-order to collect four out of the six wickets that have fallen so far in the innings.

Hasan managed to dismiss batting heavyweights Rohit and Virat Kohli for identical scores of 6 and Shubman Gill for an eight-ball duck, striking thrice in as many overs to reduce the Indians to a relatively shaky 34/3.

The 24-year-old pacer from Laxmipur near Chattogram managed to set Rohit up with a series of deliveries that swung either way, his innings ending with an outside edge that resulted in a catch in the slips. He would later strangle Gill down the leg side before inducing a poke away from the body of Kohli that would result in a simple catch for the wicketkeeper, an all-too familiar dismissal for the batting great.

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And after his heroics in the morning session, Mahmud would break the fourth-wicket partnership between opener Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rishabh Pant by having the latter caught-behind off a short, wide delivery that kissed the toe-end of his blade shortly after lunch.

Joining the party was pace sensation Nahid Rana, who has made quite the impression in just his fourth Test appearance as he managed to unsettle the Indian batters with his express pace that often went past the 90mph mark, and eventually resulted in a nick-off Jaiswal’s bat towards the slips off a 148kmph thunderbolt.

India were in serious trouble at 144/6, with KL Rahul becoming the sixth Indian batter to depart and the first to fall to spin. Had it not been for a solid counter-attacking partnership between Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, India might have even struggled to cross 200.

Rohit and Gambhir have a task at their hands

The first Test is by no means decided by the events of the first day even though the Tigers managed to give themselves a fighting chance of beating India in a Test for the first time ever. What Thursday’s events do tell us, however, is the fact that India’s batting order needs to up its game when it comes to facing quality pace in addition to ironing out its weaknesses against spin.

Captain Rohit and coach Gambhir will have four more Tests to sort that out before they board the flight to Australia a couple of months from now.

As for the ongoing Test, India possess the kind of attack that can secure them a lead even if they don’t get a big total on the board. Red-soil wickets typically tend to break up as a match progresses and favour spinners at a later stage, and this is where Ashwin and Jadeja might end up dishing out yet another potentially match-winning spell.