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England finished day two of the first test against India at 8-555 after Joe Root scored his fifth double hundred test – giving an ominous ash warning to Australia which was recently dominated by Indians in understaffed at home.
Root scored 218 points, facing 377 deliveries, and hit 19 fours as well as two sixes.
Celebrating his 100th Test in style, Root achieved the highest individual score in the Stage Test, passing Inzamam ul Haq’s 184 for Pakistan in 2005.
Root hit 341 deliveries shortly before tea.
He became the first visiting batsman to score a double hundred tests in India since New Zealander Brendon McCullum in 2010.
McCullum was also the last batsman to reach that mark against India seven years ago in Wellington.
Overall, Root is the third English batsman to score a double cent in Chennai after Mike Gatting and Graeme Fowler.
Overall, he is the fifth visiting drummer to achieve the feat on this field, with Australians Dean Jones and Matthew Hayden the other two.
“It’s a little scary when you’re on the other end and he makes it look so easy,” teammate Ben Stokes said after the game of the day.
“Right now he’s in incredible shape, and playing as well as he did in conditions that are foreign to English drummers is phenomenal.”
Root and Stokes added 124 points for the fourth wicket and dominated the morning session.
Stokes marked his 23rd half-century and attacked the spinners.
He was caught off guard after lunch in an attempt to raise the bar against Shahbaz Nadeem (2-167).
“Today initially was a typical sub-continent counter,” Stokes said, “but Nadeem asked a couple to come out the hard way, and I thought to myself, I’d rather get caught than attack rather than getting caught short-legged being defensive. “
Stokes scored 82 points on 118 deliveries with 10 fours and three sixes.
English batsmen frustrated Indian bowling throughout the day.
There was little help from the field, even with the odd weak rebound.
However, in the last session there was more spin extracted from the surface.
“There is obviously more in the wicket for the spinners than for the dressmakers, and you have to give Ishant (Sharma) and (Jasprit) Bumrah a lot of credit for the way they run. We will have to do that as well,” he said. Stokes said.
Bumrah finished the second day with 2-81, while Sharma took 2-52.
The latter took a double in consecutive deliveries in the last session while England were attached.
Sharma made a double blow by beating Jos Buttler (30) and Jofra Archer (0) on successive deliveries to the 170th.
Jack Leach (6 not released) and Dom Bess (28 not released) then beat the stick in the remaining session.
Rohit Sharma dropped Bess on 19 steps out off Washington Sundar (0-98).
Vince blows an epic blow
Ravichandran Ashwin finished the day with 2-132.
India have so far played no ball in this round.
On day one, Root became the ninth batsman to score a hundred on his 100th Test as England reached 3-263 on stumps.
Dominic Sibley scored 87.
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