Unexpected overcast morning gives India a rude wake-up call

Chennai: Overcast morning, moisture in the pitch, win the toss, choose to bowl. Seems like a no-brainer, right? But this is Chennai, where the day usually starts hot and only gets hotter. Therefore, when Thursday morning brought a surprise cool breeze and the sun hid behind clouds at Chepauk, locals quickly dismissed it as an aberration.

Bangladesh still took their chances, hedging their bets on just the morning session to put India’s batting line-up through an examination of seam and pace, making it the first time in seven years that a visiting side had decided to bowl first against India. And India walked right into the trap.

It’s not easy of course, walking into the ground first day after a six-month Test break and picking up from where they had left against England. Muscle memory too plays a tricky part here. Remember Shubman Gill’s second innings dismissal at the Duleep Trophy, chasing a wide ball from Navdeep Saini and edging behind? This time, he did the same on the leg side. Almost a decade into discussing Virat Kohli’s problem against the moving ball on fourth stump, and he keeps providing newer context to it. Rohit Sharma too isn’t one to stick around for long if he isn’t middling the ball.

Which is a shame because all India needed to hijack this Test on the first day itself was to just play out the first session. Where the cricket should have been about ‘playing the conditions’, something Gautam Gambhir is really keen on, India lost three vital wickets to disconcerting dismissals—all to the impressive Hasan Mahmud—to give Bangladesh an early momentum. Taskin Ahmed was quick but it was Mahmud’s heady concoction of seam and impeccable length that quickly wrong-footed India.

Wafting at balls seaming away, squaring up to those coming into him, Rohit Sharma quickly became edgy despite starting pretty solid in the first two overs. He survived a leg-before call from Mahmud, with the DRS looking mighty close after the ball clipped the top of middle to uphold the umpire’s call. There was a boundary through point too, again off Mahmud, that Sharma went through despite not quite hitting it from the middle. But his luck finally ran out when Mahmud stole an outside edge with the ball seaming away slightly to open up Sharma.

Mahmud was in fantastic rhythm by now. Facing him now was Shubman Gill, known to be highly tentative in his first few balls. First ball he is in, beaten. And then, not taking any chance at all, Gill just kept leaving. Or maybe it was bait, Mahmud tricking him into believing he will only concentrate on the channel. Wicket maiden in the bag, Mahmud returned to surprise with a ball seaming down the leg that Gill couldn’t flick. Next ball, shorter and seaming in, barely fended away. Third ball, back at his legs, and this time Gill almost guided it to the wicketkeeper.

The misery wasn’t over yet. Next to go was Kohli through a dismissal that couldn’t have been predicted because he always seems to play the ball so well even when out of form. Shouldering arms to the first ball from Mahmud, clipping him to backward square leg when the ball was pitched up before playing a delicate late cut to Taskin Ahmed, all seemed well with Kohli as he played around the ground. Till Mahmud tested his judgment with that age-old nemesis—a good length ball outside off—that Kohli chased with hard hands and ended up edging to the wicketkeeper. Barely an hour into the first session and it was already turning into a morning India would have dreaded.