Ollie Pope won the Player of the Match for his 196.
Ollie Pope got universal praise for his match-winning effort of 196 in the first Test between India and England which was played in Hyderabad recently. England made a brilliant comeback from conceding a 190-run lead in 1st innings and won the Test by 28 runs.
After India made 436 to England’s 246 runs in the first innings, not many gave the visitors a chance to win the Test match. However, Ollie Pope played an audacious knock in the 3rd innings, taking the attack to the Indian spinners and scoring a match-winning 196 on a "challenging" pitch in the series opener.
England's batters used unorthodox shots as a way to unsettle the Indian spinners' rhythm and with Pope leading the way, made 420 runs in their second innings. This meant that India had to make 231 runs to win the Test match.
But Tom Hartley made his second innings count and picked 7/62 as India folded for 202 runs and lost the game by 28 runs. England is now 1-0 up in the five-game series with the second Test to be played in Vizag from February 2 onwards.
India head coach Rahul Dravid was impressed at how Ollie Pope neutralized the Indian spinners on a Hyderabad pitch that was offering turn and keeping low.
"I certainly haven’t seen that being done that consistently. We have seen teams doing that before, people have played some exceptional innings, but to be able to play it that consistently and that successfully without making that many mistakes, may be one or odd mistakes here and there, I probably haven’t seen it for a long time," Rahul Dravid told the press after India's 28-run defeat in Hyderabad.
"Especially the reverse sweep, the sweep is something that people employed in the past. But to be able to play reverse sweep that consistently and that successfully for that long. Hats off to him, credit to him.
Of course, we can. We have got to get more disciplined on where to pitch the ball. We will work on it. We will get better at it. We have got some world-class spinners. Not the first time we are being challenged. One of the good things about our spinners is they always come back, they always bounce back. I think he truly played an exceptional innings. It's one of those games where you sometimes have to just... you talk about it a lot in sports that you come out and give your best and when somebody does something exceptional, you shake his hand and congratulate it," he added.
Pope hit 21 fours and added crucial runs in par with the lower order- Ben Foakes, Rehan Ahmed, and Tom Hartley to push England to a lead of over 200 runs.
"I haven't seen a better exhibition of sweeping and reverse sweeping ever in these conditions against that quality of bowling," Dravid said.
(PTI inputs)