What started disastrously for hosts India against a charged-up Bangladesh side, with its three best rated batsmen – captain Rohit Sharma (6 off 19 balls), Shubhman Gill (golden duck off 8 balls) and Virat Kohli (6 off 6 balls) – sent back to the pavilion by young fast bowler Hasan Mahmud, using the conditions at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai to his best advantage, ended in glory for the team at the hands of the two spinning allrounders in the side.
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From being reduced to 34-3 within the first hour of play on the opening day of the first of two-match Test series against Bangladesh, and then 144-6 in the post lunch session, ending the day at 339-6 was a remarkable turnaround and testimony to the resilience seen in the Indian batting order these last few years.
Taking control of the innings, as they have often done in the past, the old warhorses Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, after getting together before tea break, literally turned the game into a T20 match smashing the till then rampaging Bangladesh bowling attack all over the park.
With their unbeaten stand of 195 runs in just 229 balls, the duo recorded the highest seventh-wicket partnership at M.A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai.
On his home turf, Ravichandran Ashwin scored a brilliant century off just 108 balls, plundering 10 fours and two sixes and surpassing his previous best of a hundred in 117 balls against the West Indies in 2011. This is the spinning allrounder’s sixth Test hundred and first against Bangladesh.
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It is also his second consecutive hundred at M.A. Chidambaram stadium; the previous one came against England in 2021, the last time India played a Test in Chennai.
Ravindra Jadeja matched him stroke for stroke. His unbeaten 86 in 117 deliveries also included 10 fours and two sizes.
The duo, Ashwin (38 years) and Jadeja (35 years), on Thursday proved that they still have lot of cricket left in them, and are valuable assets to the team because of their all-round versatility.
Though the allrounders steered the team to a commanding position at the end of the first day, the role of young opener Yashasvi Jaiswal (56 off 118 balls) and wicketkeeper batsman Rishab Pant (39 off 52 balls) in stabilising the innings after three quick dismissals cannot be underscored. Their fourth wicket stand yielded 62 valuable runs in 99 balls.
KL Rahul, coming in at No. 6, returned cheaply on an individual score of 16 after facing 50 deliveries. He once again failed to come out of his defensive mindset.
In his post play comments, Ashwin said “This is a ground I completely love to play cricket in. It’s given me a lot of wonderful memories.”
“It helps that I’m coming off a T20 tournament (referring to the Tamil Nadi Premier League – TNPL) where I worked quite a bit on batting and playing shots. On a surface like this with a bit of spice, if you’re going after the ball, you might as well go after it hard like Rishabh (Pant) does,” Ashwin said explaining his aggressive batting.
“It’s an old-school Chennai surface with bounce and carry. The red soil pitch allows you to play a few shots if you are willing to just get in line and give it a bit of a tonk when there’s width,” he added.
TEAMS
India: Rohit Sharma (c), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant (wk), KL Rahul, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah, Akash Deep, Mohammed Siraj.
Bangladesh: Shadman Islam, Zakir Hasan, Najmul Hossain Shanto (c), Mominul Haque, Mushfiqur Rahim, Shakib Al Hasan, Litton Das (wk), Mehidy Hasan Miraz, Taskin Ahmed, Hasan Mahmud, Nahid Rana.
