India v England, 1st Test, Hyderabad, 25-29 January, 2024

Time for an actual Test thread now that this series is close to a start.

Do we have likely XIs?

Will Crawley, Duckett, Pope etc try to force the pace ala Bazball? Can't see it on the likely dusty bunsens England are likely to be served up.

Brook out 

Kohli out 

India wins the moral victory

Mucca hinting Stokes might not be fit ....the moral victory is still on

C’mon India.

Is NoHit a better skipper than Kohli?

Who skippers England if Piggsy misses?

I've always had a soft spot for Mother England, except when we play them, and generally tend to hope they go OK against all other opposition.

But after the pissweakness of the England players and administrators in 2023 Ashes, that has now changed forever. So yes, fellow Aus Bailers/England haters - I stand appropriately corrected in my former deluded stance.

C'mon India. Serve those stinky Poms up sandpaper wickets.

horace wrote:C’mon India.

Is NoHit a better skipper than Kohli?

Who skippers England if Piggsy misses?

Ollie "soap-on-a-rope" Pope is the VC, so presumably he steps up to the (C) posy.

And I reckon NoHit is a better skipper than E-Coli. He's not prone to the emotion shown by Coalie. Wise head.

Teams?

From Dickinfo...

India (probable): 1 Rohit Sharma (capt), 2 Yashasvi Jaiswal, 3 Shubman Gill, 4 Shreyas Iyer, 5 KL Rahul, 6 Ravindra Jadeja, 7 KS Bharat (wk), 8 Axar Patel, 9 R Ashwin, 10 Jasprit Bumrah, 11 Mohammed Siraj

England: 1 Zak Crawley, 2 Ben Duckett, 3 Ollie Pope, 4 Joe Root, 5 Jonny Bairstow, 6 Ben Stokes (capt), 7 Ben Foakes (wk), 8 Rehan Ahmed, 9 Mark Wood, 10 Tom Hartley, 11 Jack Leach

England win the toss and bat.

Creepy belts 2 early boundaries

Now Duckett smacks 2 4s

Creepy Duck going at a run a minute.

Plenty of spin from both ends

The Duck lbw to Ashtray. 1-55

1-58 at Drinks

Lol… the Nose fails and Bannies confident that Root is gone.

Bannies can't get the technology to work. What a joke

Root survives.

Ashtray gets Creepy

LOL @ Poms. 0-55 to 3-60

goes without saying but Poms won't bat out the day

EDIT: but maybe they will surprise me, since still 3 down at lunch

Nephew and the Ginger sook steady with a 48* stand. Eng 3-108 at Lunch

Is there anything not to despise about bleating Billy Bunter Bairstow?

No.

Ginger sook and Neph both gone. 5-126