Swept away: Cook made a watchful 52 before he was caught at mid-on after mistiming a sweep off Harbhajan
More than anything, Alastair Cook said before the start of this Test match, batting is a mental game and coming to terms with a lack of preparation is little more than a mental adjustment. Nobody illustrated this theory more clearly than his opening partner, Andrew Strauss, yesterday. At first scratchily, then with increasing confidence, he soaked up Indian pressure for four minutes short of six energy-sapping hours, passing 4,000 Test runs in the process and, more significantly, his thirteenth Test hundred.
So central was Strauss to England's opening salvo in this series, it was immediately obvious that his dismissal, a clipped return catch to Amit Mishra, the leg spinner, was the moment that tilted the first day's honours India's way. It came as a shock, such was the assurance with which Strauss was playing, an assurance that suggested he was in the middle of the purplest of patches. In a way he is, this being his third first-class hundred in as many matches. But, of course, there was the small matter of 2 months between his first and second and this, his third.
It is this context - the utterly inadequate nature of the preparation - rather than the beauty of the strokeplay that made Strauss's hundred yesterday such a special effort and which, when he comes to dwell on such things in years to come, will persuade him, surely, that this was one of his very finest performances. It was a pity that, of his colleagues, only Cook found inspiration from his efforts, as a tumescent 164 for one became a flabby 229 for five by close of play.
Momentum began to shift shortly after tea when Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the India captain, finally found, in Zaheer Khan, predictably, and Yuvraj Singh, surprisingly, a combination to halt England's charge. With an accommodating ball, the slightest tilt of his wrist and knowledge gained from years of bowling on lifeless pitches such as these, Zaheer swung the ball this way and that, at will, trapping Ian Bell plumb in front with an in-ducker second ball after tea and then surprising Kevin Pietersen with a bouncer that the England captain spliced up in the air for the bowler to take the simplest of return catches.
It signalled the end of a skittish, eccentric innings from Pietersen that suggested, for all his assurance in front of the press corps, the events of the past ten days and the sleepless nights might well have taken their toll and clouded his normally clear-thinking mind. Usually, Pietersen's nerves are reflected in his kamikaze running at the start of his innings, but yesterday his whole game seemed to be affected as he wandered about his crease, looking thoroughly ill at ease and treating Yuvraj as if he was Derek Underwood on a sticky dog rather than an occasional left-arm spinner with 15 first-class wickets to his name.
Shortly after Pietersen's bizarre innings, Paul Collingwood was the victim of an equally odd bit of umpiring from Billy Bowden, the ball clearly coming off pad instead of bat, before ending up in short leg's hands. Collingwood may feel particularly hard done by, since Bowden sent him on his way in exactly the same fashion last summer at Lord's against South Africa, and may wonder what might have been had the Indian immigration department been able to issue Asad Rauf, the original umpire from Pakistan, his visa in time.
The unavailability of Rauf was just a small reminder that this game was being played in unusual circumstances. The other was the minute's silence just before the off and the black armbands worn by both teams. Not that the moment was charged with any emotional electricity, since there were barely a thousand spectators in the ground at the start. While this was not the kind of ringing endorsement of the decision to play this game so soon after the Mumbai atrocities that we were hoping for, in truth it reflected more the reality of Test cricket in India during these Twenty20 days. The number swelled to about 6,000 by the day's end and the hope is for a proper crowd come the weekend.
Strauss had been one of the first England players to make public his desire to return and play the Tests. Maybe this positive state of mind helped his cause. Certainly he thought so, saying at the end of the day's play: “I was as relaxed as I've felt going into a Test match for a long time. Maybe all the stuff that's been going on as regards security helped take my mind off the pressures of playing Test cricket. I felt pretty comfortable from ball one.”
He may have felt comfortable, but at the start it looked as if he was scratching around like a backyard chook. Things gradually began to come together, but the morning's work was typical Strauss, all nudges and deflections on the leg side, with the occasional sweep off the spinners. In fact, his first off-side runs did not come until after lunch, by which time Harbhajan Singh was in the process of feeding Strauss, time and again, his favourite cut shot and, by doing so, unwittingly helped to induce a greater freedom of strokeplay.
Strauss played the spinners superbly. He talked of “being busy” and indeed he was. Harbhajan, in particular, had no answer as Strauss, determined to play off the back foot, picked the spinner's length as easily as a burglar might a lock, stepping back to cut when he was marginally short and sweeping judiciously when Harbhajan overcompensated. This ability, when set, to turn the strike over almost at will is one reason why Strauss's conversion rate of fifties to hundreds (13 times out of 27) is so good.
Cook's is less so (seven times out of 22), and this is largely because, unlike Strauss, he often gets stuck for long periods against spinners without moving the score forward. Yesterday, there were signs that he was learning to do so. There was evidence of a sweep shot - until now, not one of Cook's strokes - possibly the result of working with the batting coach, Andy Flower, who was one of the game's greatest-ever sweepers.
In fact, it was the sweep stroke that brought Cook's downfall, as he looked to mow Harbhajan away over the leg side, only to see a top edge end up in Zaheer's pouch at mid-on. Cook played well for his 52, but here the mistake was not so much of planning but execution. Cook's innings yesterday included signs that he is becoming a better player of spin, but his downfall reiterated that not everything about batting is in the mind.
England: First Innings
A J Strauss c and b Mishra 123
A N Cook c Zaheer b Harbhajan 52
I R Bell lbw b Zaheer 17
K P Pietersen c and b Zaheer 4
P D Collingwood c Gambhir b Harbhajan 9
A Flintoff not out 18
J M Anderson not out 2
Extras (lb 4) 4
Total (5 wkts, 90 overs) 229
†M J Prior, G P Swann, S J Harmison and M S Panesar to bat.
Fall of wickets: 1-118, 2-164, 3-180, 4-195, 5-221.
Bowling: Zaheer 17-7-36-2; Ishant 15-2-29-0; Harbhajan 26-2-67-2; Mishra 20-4-63-1; Yuvraj 11-2-22-0; Sehwag 1-0-8-0.
India: V Sehwag, G Gambhir, R Dravid, S R Tendulkar, V.V.S. Laxman, Yuvraj Singh, *†M S Dhoni, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, A Mishra and Ishant Sharma.
Umpires: B F Bowden (New Zealand) and D J Harper (Australia).
Series details: Second Test starts December 19 (in Mohali).
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