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WICKET! Salt c Shedge b Krishna 6, England 8-1

Prasidh Krishna, who is both the giant and the beanstalk, opens up from the other end, and the first boundary of the day comes via a Phil Salt straight drive. Nothing huge or wallopy, as is often his wont. Crisp past the bowler. But that’s as good as his day will get, as he lines up the next ball and whacks it out to deep square leg, and while there are only two boundary riders allowed so early in the innings, he has found one of them on the full. Shedge on debut takes the catch.

1st over: England 4-0 (Salt 2, Buttler 1) Another quiet opening over for England with the bat. Arshdeep Singh is swinging the ball with his left-arm efforts, and neither Salt nor Buttler tries anything expansive.

Looks like we’re finally going to get a game.

Teams - The Kid is out

Vaibhav Sooryavanshi has indeed been dropped for the first time in his career, with Samson coming back, and Suryansh Shedge making his debut. His surname doesn’t rhyme with hedge, if you’re wondering, it’s pronounced more like Shed-geh.

Dawson comes in for England, spinning all-rounder.

England
Phil Salt
Jos Buttler +
Harry Brook *
Jacob Bethell
Tom Banton
Sam Curran
Will Jacks
Liam Dawson
Jofra Archer
Adil Rashid
Josh Tongue

India
Sanju Samson
Abishek Sharma
Ishan Kishan +
Shreyas Iyer *
Shivam Dube
Tilak Varma
Suryansh Shedge
Axar Patel
Prince Yadav
Arshdeep Singh
Prasidh Krishna

Harry Brook says he wanted to bat anyway, so happy days. Iyer says the wicket won’t change much, so presumably India want to know the task ahead of them with the bat.

India win the toss and will bowl

Shreyas Iyer calls heads correctly, and there’s a small bump in fortunes for India.

There we have it: the toss will be 45 minutes after the scheduled time, then a shortened break before play, which will start 30 minutes after the scheduled time.

Updated

Footage on the telly of India’s players arriving at the ground. We’re waiting on revised start times.

Also remarkable, considering the adventure that is travelling by road in Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Bengaluru, that Indian teams still consistently reach the ground on time in all of those places, but had to come to England to get a bad enough traffic jam to keep them from playing.

Start delayed

This is a comical one. The start of this match will be delayed. Not because of rain, not because of lightning. Not because of bees. Not because of stray crossbow bolts. No, the start of this match will be delayed because of… traffic.

The Indian bus is stuck in traffic, and the players couldn’t get to the ground in time.

Who would have predicted that the cricket ground nestled between two motorways, miles outside of the nearest town, with no reasonable means of getting there by public transport, would have problems with traffic?

Ah well, good thing there’s an Ashes Test scheduled there next year, no doubt that will go swimmingly.

Preamble

Geoff will be here shortly.