Afghanistan Play India in First Ever Test Match Experience

Minnows Afghanistan began their one-off test match against India in Bengaluru’s Chinnaswamy Stadium yesterday. Becoming only the 12th nation in the world of cricket to achieve Test Nation status, Afghanistan went into the match with much expectation about putting on a good show, particularly after a few Afghanistan players gave stellar performances in the recently concluded Indian Premier League. India won the toss and elected to bat.

As the match began, Indian opener Shikhar Dhawan showed that he was still in T20 mode, smashing a quick fire century while his partner at the crease, Murali Vijay went about scoring runs at a more normal pace. Dhawan was eventually caught by Mohammad Nabi off the bowling of Yamin Ahmadzai for a score of 104 runs, off of 96 deliveries. His departure brought K.L. Rahul to the middle, and India continued to dominate the first two sessions of the day as Vijay went on to complete his century, while Rahul managed a half century. Racing ahead to what was imagined to be an unassailable lead, it would be towards the end of the first day that a combination of superb bowling by the Afghanistan bowlers and errors on the part of the Indian batsmen which would sway the equation back more in favour of the Afghanistan side.

After Vijay reached his century off of a little over a hundred deliveries, and Rahul was bowled on 54 by Ahmadzai, the Indian team seemed to go through a mini collapse, as batsmen seemed to come and go at regular intervals without making much of an impact on the overall score. Cheteswar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane and Dinesh Karthik came and went with a cumulative contribution of 49 runs, and it was not until Hardik Pandya managed to provide some stability to the middle order, that India ended the day on 347/6 in 78 overs.

As of the writing of this report, 11:35 am on Friday, 15th of June, 2018, India have been bowled out for 474 runs in 104.5 overs, on the second day of this test match.