5 areas where England batsmen outdid India in the first innings of the Rajkot Test

#5 Making use of the chances they were gifted

Moeen Ali’s drop was one mistake too many

A cat has nine lives and England had six. Alastair Cook and Haseeb Hameed were put down on the first morning but that didn’t cost the hosts much. What hurt them was Moeen Ali’s drop. Ali had just got to his fifty and he tried to flick one on to the leg side off Ashwin.

The ball went off the face of the bat and straight through the hands of Cheteshwar Pujara who was at short leg, though it wasn’t the easiest of chances you would expect someone as good as Pujara to snatch one of those. Ali then went on to get 117.

On Thursday morning it was Wriddhiman Saha’s butter fingers that let Ben Stokes off the hook twice. First, when he was batting on 60, he slashed one to Saha and the wicket-keeper diving to his right spilled it. Next, it was almost a mirror image of the first as Stokes then at 61 slashed again and Saha grassed it again. The second chance though was a lot easier and both times it was Umesh Yadav who was at the receiving end. Stokes finally got out after amassing 128 runs.