Cricket: one of the great Test debuts

It was a draw that felt like a “resounding victory”, said Mike Atherton in The Times. Just a fortnight after England were humbled in Bangladesh, they “nearly pulled off one of the great heists” against India, the world’s No. 1 side. When time was called on the first Test, in Rajkot on Sunday, India were “six wickets down and teetering”. On home ground, India are all but unassailable, said Paul Newman in the Daily Mail. Only once had they been beaten in their previous 13 home Tests. Yet England were “by far the better side”. Before this match, no visiting batsman had made a century in India since 2013; but four England players – Joe Root, Moeen Ali, Ben Stokes and Alastair Cook – achieved that feat in a single Test. Remarkably, Cook’s was his 30th Test century, a tally registered by only 12 other batsmen in history, and his fifth in India – a record for a foreign player.

Unlike his more experienced teammates, the 19-year-old newcomer to the side, Haseeb Hameed, didn’t score a century, said Scyld Berry in The Sunday Telegraph. But so what: he still made the finest Test debut by an England batsman in 40 years, scoring an incredible 82 runs in the second innings, a record for an England debutant. Hameed doesn’t look like the kind of opening batsman who “strikes trepidation into his opponents”, said Lawrence Booth in The Mail on Sunday. He hasn’t been shaving for long, and lacks the “gym-honed frame” of his teammates. Yet he has already acquired a fearsome reputation at his club, Lancashire, where he averages nearly 50 runs a match, and scored more than 1,000 in his first season. A born batsman, Hameed’s technique is exemplary, said George Dobell on Espncricinfo. In the first Test, his footwork was “crisp”, his judgement “astute”. But most impressive of all was his composure: even though England were under pressure, Hameed was remarkably assured – more so, at times, than Cook, his opening partner. England have long struggled to find someone who can play alongside Cook (Hameed is his tenth partner in four years), but it now looks as if their “long search may be over”.

The batsmen certainly stole the show, said Simon Wilde in The Sunday Times. But England’s bowlers, particularly Adil Rashid, confounded expectations by out-spinning India. Rashid has often “exasperated” England fans, yet his seven wickets made this the finest Test of his career so far: he caused problems for “even the best of India’s batsmen”. It was all a far cry from last month’s match in Dhaka, where England’s batsmen were terrorised by Bangladesh’s spinners, while their own spinners struggled to assert themselves on Bangladeshi pitches. This Test proved that England can still thrive in Asia.