By the time Zia Ur Rahman and Azmatullah Omarzai skimmed through their first overs of the day against Yashasvi Jaiswal and KL Rahul, it was amply clear that the pitch and the seamers could not have startled the Indian openers.
Playing a Test match in the burning June heat at a new northern venue is a relatively new experience for the Indian unit, too. But the feeling of facing Test thoroughbreds for days is much more stifling for Afghanistan. An unhelpful bowling surface, though, isn’t a new feeling for Rahman and his teammates. They dwell on nature-proof cement slabs day in and day out back home.
Adjusting to the surface after losing the toss at the New PCA Stadium on Saturday, Afghanistan had exhausted reserves of an entire XI, sapped limbs, sloppy palms and uninspired minds. The visitors were soon teleported back in time. Back to 2018, when a classic desi batting order gatecrashed their red-letter day in Bengaluru. Shubman Gill’s group matched them on execution and buried the Afghans under a greater volume of runs, with 368 for three in 85 overs, on the opening day.
The template followed from what made the transition briefly seem a lot smoother in England last year, a stoic Rahul century (100), a controlled ton from captain Gill (103 not out), a composed 81 from No. 3 Sai Sudharsan and the return of a free-spirited Rishabh Pant, belting sixes at will after a parched IPL summer.
Englishman Richard Pybus had travelled the world coaching teams before the Afghanistan job. A visit to Kabul before his first assignment as head coach in the one-off Test in New Chandigarh was a revelation for the 61-year-old.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen it,” Pybus said on Friday. “They don’t have cricket fields, they have cricket grounds, and the ground is made of stone, the boundary is made out of stone, and the pitch is a concrete slab in the middle.”
There was little that his bowlers could do when a black soil pitch replicated that concrete feeling. Only the lack of outright pace and bounce could have disrupted the top-order now. The opening few overs suggested minimal carry, as the seamers’ deliveries fell well short of the keeper. Despite their conspicuous handicap on speeds, Rahman and Omarzai stuck to their lengths, forcing Rahul and Jaiswal to assess and reassess their options early against the uneven bounce. Every time Rahul pressed on the back foot, Rahman extracted enough seam movement to probe both edges.
And when an opportunity arose in the shape of an outside edge in the 11th over from Rahman, his captain Hashmatullah Shahidi was overly cautious to spend a review, the heat clearly taking its toll on the field. An early spill at gully off Jaiswal wouldn’t hurt as much; the left-hander poked one around his hips to the keeper on 24 in the 12th over.
Class, not clinical
After struggling to sync his feet and wrists on the backfoot through the opening hour, Rahul deftly grew into his strokes on the leg-side with freedom. The ball went up in the air for the first time in the 21st over, when Rahul sent the ball flat off the debutant spinner Nangeyalia Kharote to the wide long-on boundary.