Leeds, June 25: Ben Duckett top-scored with 149 as England beat India by five wickets in the first Test of the five-match series for the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy here on Tuesday.Resuming at 21 for no loss on the fifth and final day, England remained unscathed in the first session and even as India fought back with four wickets in the second, they remained ahead in the chase.
Chasing 371 for the win, the hosts reached 373 for 5 from 82 overs.
Joe Root (53 not out) and Jamie Smith (44 not out) took England over the line with an unbeaten 71-run partnership for the fifth wicket.
The second Test will be played from July 2-6 at Birmingham.
Ben Stokes, England Captain: We’ve got some good memories here, this is another one to add to it. Awesome Test match to be a part of, going into the final hour of day 5 and getting the run-chase. You don’t know what’s going to happen before a ball is bowled. You have to do what you think is going to give you the best chance of winning. We were trying to look at what will give us the best opportunity to win. We saw a bit of grass and moisture on the pitch, we thought it will do a bit for us. The opposition is allowed to play well, thought they played very well in that first session.
Unbelievable. The pressure of a fourth innings and going out there is tough, especially in England. That partnership between Zak (Crawley) and Ben (Duckett) was incredible to get us going. To get that down to set us off in a run-chase was incredible. They complement each other really well. Thought Zak stayed very calm. Duckett as well, really good. Zak’s 60-odd was very important as well. Chasing down totals gives this team a lot of confidence.
To win against quality oppositions, like we have for a number of times, it gives us confidence. Been a great start to the series, got four more hard games to come. Honestly I think there’s a lot of skill that has contributed to winning this Test match but also the attitude we showed was incredible. We were on the field for long periods of time in this game, thought we turned up with the attitude that we could break this game open at any time.
Hosh Tongue’s spells in both innings was really impressive. There was a lot skill that helped us win this game but also the attitude we showed was great as well. I think this Test match shows that if it goes down to the last hour on Day 5 then it’s a pretty good wicket, you always feel like you need to be the one to break the game open. Like I said, Tongue’s spells were superb to clean up the Indian tail quickly. Very much looking forward to the next four.
Shubman Gill, Indian Captain: I think it was a brilliant Test match. We had our chances, we dropped catches and our lower-order didn’t contribute enough, but proud of the team and overall a good effort. Yesterday we were thinking we were going to get around 430 and declare. Unfortunately our last 6 wickets scored only around 20-25 runs which is never a good sign. Even today after their brilliant opening partnership I felt we still had our chance but just didn’t go our way in this match. (On batting collapses) Yes, that was something that we spoke about but when you are out there in the middle it happens so quickly and I think it would be one of those things that we have to rectify in the upcoming matches Could be one of those things we have to rectify in the upcoming matches. Yes, definitely chances don’t come easy especially on wickets like these and we dropped quite a few catches but I think we’ve got a young team, still a learning one and hopefully in the next matches we’ll be able to improve on those aspects. (Asked if they could have done anything differently) I mean not really, I think the first session that we bowled we were quite spot on, I think we bowled pretty well.