The eagerly awaited event of the English summer begins on Friday when the five-match Test series between England and India gets underway at what is expected to be a scorching hot Headingley in Leeds.
This is the beginning of another cycle of the World Test Championship for these two nations so both will be keen to get off to a winning start both in this match and in the series so we should be in for an extremely competitive encounter.
England
This will be a discernible more difficult task for England than their last outing in this format. That came against Zimbabwe but that was always going to be just an exercise in blowing away the cobwebs. England will begin their series knowing that this is it for this era. They play a five match home series against India and soon after that they will go down under for The Ashes, the series which ultimately everything they have done under Brendan McCullum and Ben Stokes will be judged on.
England will be tested with the bat here and that bodes well for them because it will be with the bat where we will find out whether they are contenders for The Ashes or not later in the year. There are question marks over their top three, or two members of it at the very least, so it will be interesting to see how they begin the series. There are concerns over the England bowling with some big seamers missing through injury leading to a light looking attack.
India
India will be beginning a new era in this series with Shubman Gill having relaced the departed Rohit Sharma as captain and it will be interesting to see if there is a drop off in the level of the side under the new skipper. Gill has been captaining an IPL franchise for a couple of seasons so skippering a side is nothing new but he is going to be without his gun batter in the middle order as well with Virat Kohli having also called it a day.
In saying that, when you look down this India proposed batting line up there looks to be plenty of runs in it and they have been in the country long enough for them to have had plenty of preparation. India are generally a good bowling unit even away from home and so if that batting unit comes to the party and delivers the sort of runs that they would threaten to on paper then India are going to be a pretty tough nut to crack here.
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Team News
As they often do, England named their XI well in advance of the match and they have resisted the temptation to bring Jacob Bethell back into the side. Josh Tongue, Chris Woakes and Brydon Carse make up the majority of the seam attack.
India are yet to confirm their side but it is expected that Shubman Gill will bat at four and Rishabh Pant will bat five. Sai Sudharsan and Karun Nair look set to bat at three and six. This is one of the matches Jasprit Bumrah is expected to play.
Betting
I’ll go with a couple of bets for this opening match of the series while observing to see how it plays out with the intention to get much more involved the longer it goes on. Conditions might just have fallen really well for India here. We know the pitch gets better for batting here but it is also going to crack over the course of the match given the heat that is going through the UK right now. That will bring the Indian spinners into play but when you look at this England and India side, India look to have the more secure top six and certainly have the better seam attack and when you put that together, the 15/8 on an away win looks pretty big to me.
Another price that looks big to me is the 6/1 on Ben Stokes to be the leading wicket taker for England in the first innings. Going back to the Zimbabwe match and you would have to say that the touring batters looked pretty comfortable in the main in the first innings but then Stokes broke the game open with 2-11 and England never looked back from there. Shoaib Bashir was the highest wicket taker in both innings against Zimbabwe but you would be surprised if a finger spinning off-spinner causes too many troubles for an India side who play spin so well. The other three seamers – Chris Woakes, Brydon Carse and Josh Tongue are nothing special either so it might need Stokes in the middle of the innings to break it open again and at 6/1 I’ll pay to see if that is a goer or not.
Tips
Back India to win 1st Test for a 3/10 stake at 2.88 with William Hill
Back them here:
Back B.Stokes Top England 1st Inns Bowler for a 1/10 stake at 7.00 with Unibet
