The last year has seen England change the pace of play in Test Cricket. From being a side that could only win one out of 17 Tests they fought through a strong set of challenges under Ben Stokes to finish with two fortune-changing summers. Challenges overseas remained though. While the Ashes is still a good two years away in Australia, England had another challenge.

Bazball in India, against the Indian spinners. While Australia is a challenging place, taking India on in India is seen as one of the biggest tasks in sport, in Test Cricket. England though came in with a line-up full of their Bazball stars and started the first session pretty well. An hour in and the run-rate was pretty good. They had Ravindra Jadeja, who is normally the more economical of the Indian spinners, going at four an over in the first session, but a couple of mini-collapses changed the course of the innings for them.

Towards the end of the day, Yashashvi Jaiswal was the one who came out and showed how to attack sustainably. He took the bowlers on, got the scoreboard ticking, and killed a good chunk of the lead quickly. It was the man after him though who stole the show. KL Rahul, batting against an older ball which was taking turn had his challenges.

Playing in place of Virat Kohli, with Rahul’s role as a wicket-keeper taken away at home, KL Rahul came up with an innings that will make it tough for the management to ignore him. He made 86 runs batting with a good strike rate while looking to keep the scoreboard ticking.

Throughout his innings, he got into some good positions looked at home against spin, and ran pretty well during his partnership with Ravindra Jadeja. Eventually, India managed to get past England’s score in fewer overs which highlighted the nature of their innings. While batters were out holing out, there was some strong knocks before that which put India in a pretty good position.

While his knock of 86 could have been converted into a bigger score, the performance gave a lot to be happy about. A year ago, KL Rahul had a lot of criticism going around his spot across formats. Now, Rahul has played probably one of his best Test knocks in South Africa, and had a really good World Cup, and calls for making the T20 squad are continuously growing. Rahul, now properly in his prime, is enjoying a really good period and will be a tough player to leave out when Virat Kohli comes back.