India vs England: Pant gives hosts a dose of their own medicine on Day 1 at Edgbaston – Firstcricket News, Firstpost

Fight fire with fire — an expression that might as well have been coined with Rishabh Pant in mind, and one that serves as the pithiest of explanations for India’s dramatic Day One turnaround at Edgbaston.

After their success against a shambolic, meek England last summer, India must have been more than a little dismayed to arrive in Birmingham, for this series’ long-delayed finale, to discover their opponents resurgent, the hearty breeze of Bazball billowing through their sails.

England unsurprisingly opted to pick up where they left off against New Zealand at Headingley, winning the toss and picking the aggressive option, making India bat. And It was a strategy that was looking pretty smart with the visitors 98/5 — not even the rain delay either side of lunch could have much impact on the pace with which the game was progressing.

However India still had a trick up their sleeve — Pant — whose knows one way to play, a way that proved brutally effective here in delivering a stunning counterpunch.

If this was meant to be England’s ‘Summer of Bazball’ then here came Pant to show that this was the game he had been playing all along – this was an innings to remind the world that he was born playing Bazball, England have merely adopted it.

However by his usual outlandish standards, Pant’s innings began in a remarkably restrained style. Sure, he advanced down the track and tried to hit James Anderson down the ground from just the fourth ball he faced, not to mention scoring at around a run a ball, but there was a sense of control to his aggression, the party piece scoops and flicks shelved in favour of something a little more traditional.

Disguised among the moments where he took 16 runs from one Jack Leach over, there was an ominous air of responsibility to Pant’s innings-building, his half century brought up from just 51 balls with an ease that was starting to prove worrying for England’s bowlers.

Tea came and went and Pant and Ravindra Jadeja’s partnership grew, Matt Potts finding himself particularly in the firing line. Perhaps because we have come to expect such levels of unorthodoxy from Pant, his moments of off-book genius were somehow less ostentatious and all the more effective for it.

To England’s chagrin all that this meant was that Pant had another available gear to move into, and once he did Ben Stokes’ side really found themselves in trouble. Pant was soon skipping down the track to belt Anderson back over his head for four, a shot played with such thrilling ferocity that it seemed perfectly fitting that at that exact moment somebody in the area let off an enormous firework, the crackle of the gunpowder almost as resounding as the thump of the ball into the boundary hoardings.

Before long Pant had his century, a fifth of his Test career and the third-fastest by an opposition batter on English shores, India carried from despair to delight on the back of their diminutive wicketkeeper.

There was still time for a few trademark bizarro world shots, including a contemptuous one-handed six, in a Leach over that went for 22, and then eventually he was gone, edging Joe Root to slip as he attempted a second consecutive six that would have taken him past 150.

In the end he had to settle for 146, not to mention serving England a very large dose of their own medicine and while he might not have much of a future career as a firefighter, he seems to be doing just fine playing cricket.

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