Key events
101st over: India 430-3 (Gill 147, Pant 113) I should have said, Harry Brook is back on the field and seems fine. Stokes continues and I’ve no idea what happened as I was rattling through emails. No boundaries, wickets or chances, that’s all you need to know.
“Given sport is so much about being unfettered, perhaps captaincy takes the batter’s mind away from the quotidian worries about the 90mph balls coming towards him and focuses on what he wants the team to do,” writes Alex Netherton. “By looking at other obligations, batting is initially carefree. Then as he comes under pressure he looks to himself to deliver, given he is used to being the main man, the scrutiny is not just on the team and his leadership, but everything he is doing all the time, every delivery. No wonder their heads turn to popcorn in the end. We can’t all be happy-go-lucky lads like you are.”
Rishabh Pant makes a spectacular hundred!
100th over: India 426-3 (Gill 144, Pant 112) Oh Rishabh Pant, we don’t deserve you. He reaches his seventh Test hundred – and his first since that horrific car crash in 2022 – with a one-handed six off Bashir, then celebrates with a somersault.
It’s been a remarkable innings: 146 balls, 10 fours, four sixes.
Make that five sixes. Pant smears another down the ground, though he didn’t get hold of it and was almost caught by Carse running backwards towards the boundary. Carse couldn’t quite reach it and the ball landed on the sponge.
England’s frustration is compounded when a top-edged pull from Pant teases midwicket before landing safely.
99th over: India 413-3 (Gill 144, Pant 99) Mark Wood strolls into the Sky commentary box and immediately suggests Stokes should try a loopy, curving full toss to Pant. That’s exactly what happens next ball, with Pant pushing it for a single to move to 99.
Wowzers. Out of nothing, Stokes produces a nasty lifter that Gill fences on the bounce to gully. He hasn’t looked this good with the ball in a long time.
“I think a major confounding factor in the batting form of an incoming captain will be that as captain they tend to be appointed as they are coming into the peak of their career – so we would expect an improvement in performance after they are selected, because we would have seen that anyway,” says Paul Whaley. “We need a statto to figure out whether there is an increase in performance relative to what would be expected for an elite player coming into their peak. (No, don’t look at me.)
“Comparing batters to bowlers may also be helpful – why would we expect captaincy to affect batting but not bowling? If it improves both compared to the average, then we might be on to something.”
That’s an excellent point. My instinct is that the improvement is greater than you would expect, even allowing for their peak years, but apparently isn’t good enough for the “BMJ”.
Drinks
98th over: India 412-3 (Gill 144, Pant 98) Pant takes a single off Bashir’s first ball, then gets back on strike for the last. Three needed, last ball before drinks… and he edges it wide of slip for a single. Duckett tries to run out Gill but flings the ball straight into the body of Brook, taking evasive action at slip. Brook runs straight off the field at the drinks. I think he’s okay; it certainly didn’t hit his hand.
“Morning Rob,” writes Theo B-P. “Not a neuroscientist but a psychiatrist here. Thanks for suggesting something to take the mind off this systematic dismantling of an English attack at the start of a huge series.
“The Yerkes-Dodson law tells us that psychological arousal can improve performance, but only up to a point, after which the stress becomes too much and performance tails off. Admittedly this was first found by giving electric shocks to mice, so you can decide for yourself how applicable it is, but perhaps it at least points to a balance between stress and performance.
“Maybe early captaincy offers the perfect motivational challenge before the psychological burden becomes overwhelming. As for the pathways, I’d speculate some degree of prefrontal cortex activation (planning, error monitoring, cognitive control) and suppression of the default mode network (leading to greater focus), but perhaps I should leave that to the real neuroscientists.
“Anyway, whatever’s happening, it’s working for him. Might as well just enjoy the innings I suppose!”
This is great, thank you. I really need to educate myself about the brain, ideally 25 years ago.
97th over: India 409-3 (Gill 143, Pant 96) Ben Stokes, England’s best bowler followed by daylight yesterday, replaces Woakes. He rams a bouncer past Pant’s right shoulder, eliciting the first lusty roar of the day from the England fans.
Gill moves into the 140s with the most beautiful push-drive through extra cover, then offers no stroke to a nice outswinger.
“Once again I find myself in the wonderful position of going to sleep with England in a rather disappointing position,” says Phil Withall. “Once again I will head off to work at five on a Sunday morning, a soul weighed down by sporting disappointment. Then I will spend the day working with two chefs from India, both of whom love cricket.
“To be honest, I can’t wait for the silent disappointment of the football season (I’m looking at you Norwich/Tooting). Enjoy the pain.”
It’s the only thing that’s real.
96th over: India 404-3 (Gill 139, Pant 95) Shoaib Bashir comes on for Brydon Carse. His first ball is on the money… so Pant falls over to the off side and laps it over leg slip’s head for four. With every uber-unorthodox shot, Pant redefines the concept of ‘laughable cricket’.
A vicious pull for six takes him to 94 with one ball of the over remaining. He goes again, of course he does, but this time he can only drag it along the ground for a single.
95th over: India 393-3 (Gill 139, Pant 84) Woakes is bowling very wide to Gill, often outside off stump of a second set. You can understand the approach, but I’m not sure it will work against Gill. He’s happy to play out a maiden and put another six deliveries in Woakes’s legs. If India are three down at lunch, there could be carnage this afternoon.
94th over: India 393-3 (Gill 139, Pant 84) Pant dumps Carse behind square on the leg side for four. He was a model of restraint last night – okay, most of the time – but this morning he’s been at his puckish best. Or worst if you’re an England bowler: Brydon Carse looks ready to blow.
“I’m no expert, and without wishing to impugn the cognitive abilities of our fine lads, isn’t it possible that they find multitasking difficult?” says Kathryn Oliver. “Unrelated q: do the women’s captains have the same issue?”
I’d have to check – from memory it diddn’t have a huge impact on Heather Knight’s form, and I don’t suppose it’s possible for NSB to get much better with the bat.
Sorry, I probably wasn’t clear enough with the original point. I mean that when a good batter becomes captain, they usually go to another level with the bat straight away. Then reality slowly grinds its incisors into their batting average. But it’s the first year, the spike, that I’m interested in. I appreciate it makes sense – empowerment, responsibility, focus – but that’s based on an understanding of human nature rather than neuroscience. I’d love to know what actually happens in the brain to make them so much better.
93rd over: India 389-3 (Gill 139, Pant 80) A nice try from Woakes, a curving slower yorker that Pant reads and blocks. England are starting to get funky with their bowling and their fields; as I type there’s a solitary wide slip and a very silly mid-off for Gill.
Woakes’ over includes two no-balls, which is really unlikely him. “A sign of tired legs” said Stuart Broad on commentary. Gill grinds a bit of sodium chloride into the wound by dabbing the eighth ball of the over to third man for four. This is a quiet masterpiece of an innings. If anything he’s timing the ball even better today.
“What a pleasure this morning to hear Mike Atherton’s and Nasser Hussain’s commentary so far this morning,” writes Brian Baldwin. “Competent, reflective, occasionally humorous but ABOVE ALL, often entirely silent. Watching a Test match does not need wall to wall chat, for the sake of the ego and misplaced idea that a commentator must talk non-stop.”
Quite. Barry Davies, my favourite commentator of all time, said one of his best pieces of commentary were the 10 minutes before the Euro 96 semi-final between England and Germany at Wembley. He said almost nothing, because how he could add to that atmosphere?
92nd over: India 380-3 (Gill 135, Pant 77) A sweetly timed cut from Gill is half stopped by the diving Crawley, who saves two runs in the process. The new ball, which swung a lot yesterday, hasn’t really move off the straight this morning.
Tell you what, England are in a rare old pickle here! It doesn’t help that they have previously disowned the draw, although that was then and they have been a bit more pragmatic in the past year. The absence of Kuldeep is in their favour, though the pitch could turn square for Jadeja on the last two days.
“How can we get a knighthood for Toby Peggs for serving humanity selflessly?” asks Naren Radhakrishnan. “His YouTube video on how to access TMS is invaluable.”
Who needs a knighthood when you have the unconditional adoration of tens of OBO readers?
91st over: India 375-3 (Gill 132, Pant 75) “Hello Rob,” says Matthew Doherty. “Is the Indian plan to score 1,000.”
No, although it would be quite a statement if they gave up the chance of a win just to break Sri Lanka’s record of 952 for six. I’d imagine their dream scenario to get 650-700 and declare an hour before the close.
90th over: India 374-3 (Gill 132, Pant 74) Beautiful shot from Pant, a deliberate dab between second slip and gully for four. There wasn’t much wrong with the delivery from Carse. He charges the next ball, only to abort his shot as the ball gets huge on him. So huge that it was called wide; perhaps Carse saw Pant coming. It feels like this head-to-head contest is about to explode.
89th over: India 368-3 (Gill 132, Pant 69) India still have a fair bit of batting to come: Karun Nair, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur. England would love to gain access to Nair, playing his first Test in eight years, while the ball is new. Gill will be aware of that – he is batting in his bubble, playing every ball on its merits, which in this case means a maiden from Woakes.
“Good morning,” writes John Starbuck. “Another puzzle, neurologically speaking, is why so many Test players go for a double-digit choice as their playing number. It must have begun with Joe Root 66, understandably a mild pun, but it looks like there’s a superstition going around. In the system used by some sides, each player has a number according to their debut, counting from the very beginning of Tests, so why not use that? I suppose they feel that anything which boosts confidence gives you an edge and there’s not much to be done about it. Confirm?”
I can confirm the innate futility of existence, if that’s what you mean by ‘there’s not much to be done’, but not sure about the shirt numbers. Having the cap number wouldn’t work as they are three digits so they wouldn’t fit on the back of the shirt. Except maybe 111, but sadly Jack Board played his last Test in 1906 and died in 1924.
88th over: India 368-3 (Gill 132, Pant 69) Pant charges Carse, tries to launch him onto the air traffic control systems and under-edges the ball on the bounce to Smith.
Carse then tries to tickle Pant’s ribs, only for Pant to see his tickle and raise it with a tickle down the leg side for four. A pretty good over from Carse ends with a fuller delivery that beats the edge. Whatever happens this summer, I think Carse will be England’s most important bowler in Australia (unless they recall Oliver Edward Robinson, and I really need to let that go).
87th over: India 364-3 (Gill 132, Pant 65) Chris Woakes’ second ball, slightly full, is timed exquisitely through extra cover by Gill. I think he just owned the weekend with that. It was a glorious, and the boundary makes this his highest Test score.
“It may come as a surprise that there is at least one neurosurgeon (currently in the middle of a conference) in far off Patna in Bihar, India who’s glued on to the OBO,” writes Prasad Krishnan. “I’m sure there would be many more in varied parts of the world surreptitiously tuning in between performing craniotomies and laminectomies while maintaining an air of gravitas that fools people into thinking we are the ‘all work and no play’ types.
“As regards neural pathways I can say with a fair degree of certainty there are none specific to batters that get activated by having captaincy thrust on them.”
So what changes? There must be something because so many captains score runs in industrial quantities at the start. It may be something painfully obvious; if so, please excuse my abundant ignorance.
86th over: India 360-3 (Gill 128, Pant 65) A quiet over from Brydon Carse to start the day. I can’t decide what to make of Carse’s performance yesterday – there were plenty of very good balls but also too many loose ones. He was probably a nose ahead of Woakes and Tongue though.
It’s another sweltering morning in Leeds, and the Met Office forecast is for some desperately hard yakka if England don’t take early wickets.
In the unlikely event that there’s a neuroscientist in the building, I have a question. Why? Why me? Why did I get this brain? We know that many batsmen-captains are at their most productive in their first year in charge; then their output starts to taper off as the captaincy wears them down.
That’s consistent with our understanding of human nature: captaincy both empowers the batter and sharpens their focus in the middle, and the history of cricket confirms that Shubman Gill’s lovely hundred yesterday shouldn’t have come as a surprise. But do we have any idea what is going on neurologically? Why is their focus sharper? How does a greater sense of responsibility manifest at the crease? What neural pathways does it change? And, most importantly of all, has anyone actually read this far?
Test Match Special overseas link
“Literally everyday on the OBO, someone asks for help locating the TMS link for overseas listeners,” writes Toby Peggs. “I made this handy video to explain how to find it. Feel free to post it the next time someone asks!”
Tremendous stuff, thanks Toby. My work here is done.
When you win the toss at Headingley – cliche klaxon – you’re supposed to look up (at the weather) rather than down at the pitch. England did neither: they looked backwards at the data, which told them the last six Tests in Leeds have been won by the team bowling first. A seventh really would be magnificent.
Ali Martin’s day one report
This being Headingley, so often a scene of the absurd and a ground where the last six Tests have been won by the side who bowled first, England will refuse to believe they are snookered. By the same token, inviting a team to bat first under clear skies and then having them dominate all three sessions was clearly suboptimal. The air was soupy, the outfield fast, and England failed to locate the Headingley length.
Preamble
Ever have one of those days you wish you could live all over again? England’s decagon of destiny, as nobody is calling it, got off to a honking start yesterday when India strolled to 359 for three after being put into bat by Ben Stokes.
As ill-conceived as Stokes’ decision was, we should remember that India would have done the same. The main reasons for India’s dominance were the brilliance of Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill, poster boys for a new India, and a rusty, erratic performance from England’s three main seamers.
Chris Woakes, Brydon Carse and Josh Tongue all went at more than 4.3 per over, a situation that in some cultures would be described as sub-optimal. England will surely bowl better today, buoyed as much as anything by precedent: they are the only team in Test history to win two games after bowling first and conceding 500.
Right now, although India are in complete control, there is a credible path to victory for England. Not sure that’ll be the case if Rishabh Pant is still batting at lunch. If Pant tees off today, England may have to countenance something even more disgusting than defeat: a draw.