Following a morale-boosting draw in Jamaica, West Indies made a positive move by including four seam bowlers on a pitch which was expected to have good carry and bounce. Among those was 19-year old Alzarri Joseph who entered into the international arena at the Darren Sammy National Cricket Stadium in Gros Islet.
Meanwhile, India surprisingly made three changes by bringing in Rohit Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Ravindra Jadeja. The visitors found themselves on the back foot as West Indies struck early blows with Joseph being particularly impressive.
Despite a breezy half-century from KL Rahul, wickets fell at regular intervals as scoring opportunities began to dry up. With the sun beating down pretty hard, the pitch also became sluggish which did not help matters.
However, Ravichandran Ashwin held firm by putting on a resolute partnership with Wriddhiman Saha and helped India crawl their way back to reach 234/5 at stumps. Let us take a look at the fascinating statistics from the opening day's play in St Lucia.
0 – Number of times Ajinkya Rahane's strike-rate has been lower than the 26.31 in this innings when he scored more than 10 runs.
0 – Indian batsmen with a higher average against West Indies than Ashwin’s 66.57* when a criteria of minimum five innings is imposed. The Tamil Nadu all-rounder went past Sunil Gavaskar to the top.
1 – Bowlers younger than Joseph at 19 years and 263 days to have taken the new-ball for West Indies in Tests. Jerome Taylor who had recently announced his retirement from the longest format opened the proceedings at 19 years and 5 days.
3 – Top-six batsmen with single-digit scores in this innings even as each of the remaining three made 35 runs or more.
3 – Indian cricketers who have struck two or more fifty-plus scores as well as picked up two or more five-wicket hauls in a Test series. Ashwin joined Kapil Dev (twice) and Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
4 – Number of fifty-plus scores for Ashwin against West Indies including this one. Interestingly, he has converted three of those into centuries.
5 – Fifty-plus scores by India’s number three batsmen since January 2014. Their average of 25.28 at one-drop is the lowest among all teams for the past 2 and a half years.
23 – Rounded-off average of Virat Kohli at the number three position including the first innings of this match. The Indian skipper has only played five innings at one-down.
43 – Runs scored by India in the second session from as many as 29 overs at a run rate of 1.48. In contrast, the first session had yielded 87 runs from just 23 overs at a scoring rate of 3.78 and the third session brought 104 runs from 38 overs at a rate of 2.74.
48 – Combined runs managed by India’s top five batsmen other than Rahul. They took 168 balls and scored six boundaries at a run-rate of 28.57.
50 – Runs for Rahul in this innings which incidentally was his first fifty in Tests. All of his three fifty-plus scores were hundreds.
457 – Average first-innings score at this venue from 4 Tests. The four preceding scores were 354, 416, 588/8 and 380.
2006 – The last instance when India lost their first two wickets within 50 balls against West Indies in a Test match.
2013 – The previous instance when Kohli batted at number three which came against Australia in Delhi. Prior to this innings, his scores at the batting position read – 14 not out, 34, 1, 41.
(*average at the end of day 1)
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