India lost the first Test vs England by 28 runs which is a shocking result for the home team. The Men in Blue enjoy dominance at home in red-ball cricket. They were cruising to a comfortable win over England in Hyderabad before Ollie Pope and Tom Hartley led the comeback for the visitors. Pope hit 196 while Hartley picked seven wickets to help England beat India and take 1-0 lead in the five-match series.

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India head coach Rahul Dravid felt that the hosts lost the plot when none of the three set batters went on to score a big three-figure score. Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja scored in 80s and got out. 

It came right down to the wire in Hyderabad but it’s England who win the closely-fought contest.#TeamIndia will aim to bounce back in the next game.

Scorecard __ https://t.co/HGTxXf8b1E#INDvENG | @IDFCFIRSTBank pic.twitter.com/OcmEgKCjUT
— BCCI (@BCCI) January 28, 2024

“We didn’t get a hundred, you know, we didn’t get somebody getting a really big hundred for us. So, in some ways, in India, I just felt we left those 70, 80 runs back in the hut in the first innings. Second innings is always going to be challenging. It’s one of those things that, you know, it’s tough. It’s not easy to chase 230 or it’s not done very often,” Dravid said in the post-match press conference.

Dravid also backed the youngsters in the team who have failed consistently over a period in the Tests. Shubman Gill, especially, has been in terrible form, scoring just over 100 runs in his last ten innings in Tests. But Dravid, without taking any names, said that everyone has been selected in the team on merit.

“A lot of players are quite young, in the sense that a lot of these guys do play a lot of white-ball cricket and also maybe don’t get a lot of time to get to play a lot of first-class cricket as well. So they’re learning and I think they’re getting there. To be fair, there have been challenging wickets as well over the last few years. And it’s been a bit of a challenge for some of our young batsmen to adapt. But they’ve got the skill and they’ve got the ability, and they’ve not come here just like that; they’ve come here by scoring a lot of runs in domestic cricket, doing well in A-team cricket. So, you know, they are being picked on merit,” Dravid said.

Dravid was full of praise for Pope. The middle-order batter batted exceptionally well to hit 196 in the second innings, which paved the way for England’s win. Dravid said that he has never see someone sweep and reverse-sweep so well in these conditions against this quality of bowling attack but also hoped that in next match, Pope will commit one mistake.