Joe Root. (PTI Photo)
CHENNAI: It won’t be an exaggeration to say that India were swept out of the first Test against England at the Chepauk. Joe Root and Ben Stokes swept and reverse swept the Indian spinners so hard and over such a big arc that R Ashwin apart, the rest didn’t know where to land the ball.
For the second Test starting on Saturday, the pitch has a “darker soil”, as England’s new wicketkeeper Ben Foakes put it, and it is going “to turn earlier than what it did in the first Test”.
Now it becomes imperative that India stop Root & Co. from sweeping and on Thursday that was part of the game-plan as they got back to practice.