The Telegraph Cricket Podcast · The Telegraph

England up and running after thriller with India

·58 min·3 clips

Ben Duckett left his first two balls and then kept targeting Jadeja with sweeps and reverse sweeps.

Jake Goodwill opens by bringing the panel back to England's thriller against India at Headingley. Nick Holt and Womack Thurston were there on the ground, and their first read is simple enough: it was a classic Test match. India controlled long stretches of it, but England still found a way through at the end. The chase was England's second-highest run chase ever, behind only another effort under this regime, so the result carries real weight. Most of the discussion settles on the opening-day decision to bowl. The panel does not treat it as obviously reckless. Instead, they work through whether batting first might actually have been England's quickest route to victory. The debate stays practical rather than theatrical. One view is that England had the batting to cause India real trouble on day one and build pressure early. Another is that fielding first was not as mad as it looked once the dust settled. They keep coming back to how dangerous it is to judge a Test side too soon. Day-one verdicts can feel a bit like a football report written after twenty minutes. Hyderabad from last year comes up as the warning sign. They remember writing England off there and being proved wrong after Tom Hartley took seven wickets. This match triggers the same kind of correction. They also mention a headline that framed Ben Stokes as having his Nasser Hussain in Brisbane moment. Even with that sort of flourish, the panel still thinks England should have batted first. The episode ends with the feeling that this side keeps demanding patience from anyone trying to pin it down early.

As heard by us

A chase recap that keeps asking whether day-one certainty is ever real.

England's chase of India at Headingley gives the discussion its center, but the stronger thread is the way Nick Holt and Womack Thurston keep testing the result against a Test that kept changing shape all week.

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Why you'd press play

If you want the thinking behind England's Headingley chase, start here.

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