First Test: Bumrah, Ashwin strike as England reach 67/2 at lunch on Day 1
Chennai: Pacer Jasprit Bumrah and off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin got one apiece to peg England back to 67 for 2 at lunch on the opening day of the first Test against India, here on Friday.
Skipper Joe Root, playing his 100th Test, was batting on 4 while opener Dominic Sibley was undefeated on 26 (96 balls, 3 fours) going into the lunch break.
Openers Sibley and Rory Burns provided England a solid start with a 63-run partnership during which they did not appear to be in too much trouble.
After negotiating the pace duo of Ishant Sharma and Bumrah (7-1-17-1), they kept Ashwin (10-0-31-1) and left-arm spinner Shahbaz Nadeem (5-1-11-0) at bay, showing patience and also playing shots whenever offered the opportunity.
The openers appeared to be making a steady progress before Burns unnecessarily went for a reverse sweep off Ashwin and saw the ball lob to 'keeper Rishab Pant for an easy catch.
Newcomer Dan Lawrence was sent back by Bumrah with a beauty which tailed in sharply catching the batsman plumb in-front.
Indian captain Virat Kohli had introduced Ashwin into the attack in the eighth over. The openers Sibley and Burns negotiated the first hour without much trouble.
Ishant (5-1-8-0) and Bumrah bowled steadily but could not cause any damage. Sibley and Burns played sensibly and showed patience to deny India any early inroads.
Bumrah, playing his first test at home, saw Pant grass Burns off the first delivery which the batsman tried to glance.
England captain Root won the toss and elected to bat. Star all-rounder Ben Stokes, Jofra Archer and Rory Burns returned to the side after missing the series in Sri Lanka.
For India, Virat Kohli returned after the paternity break while Ishant Sharma returned to the squad while Shahbaz Nadeem got to play his second Test.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
