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Ben Stokes has been recalled to England’s 14-man squad for the three-match ODI series against India, having recovered from the hamstring tear that ruled him out of the second Test against Pakistan in May, as well as the subsequent limited-overs fixtures against Scotland and Australia.The ODI leg of India’s tour gets underway on July 12 at Trent Bridge, the scene of England’s world-record innings of 481 for 6 against Australia earlier this month, and by then Stokes is expected to have tested his fitness by playing in the Vitality Blast for Durham against Yorkshire at Headingley on July 5.

England ODI squad v India

Eoin Morgan (capt), Moeen Ali, Jonny Bairstow, Jake Ball, Jos Buttler (wk), Tom Curran, Alex Hales, Liam Plunkett, Adil Rashid, Joe Root, Jason Roy, Ben Stokes, David Willey, Mark Wood

Assuming he comes through that match unscathed, Stokes could be in line to make an early comeback in the third of England’s three T20Is against India, on July 8 at Bristol – the scene of his last ODI appearance on home soil in September 2017.Despite his lengthy period on the sidelines, and the success of England’s white-ball team in his absence – they achieved a 6-0 clean-sweep against Australia in ODIs and T20Is this month – the England management have no doubt about Stokes’ importance to their first-choice XI.”Ben is a three-in-one player,” Paul Farbrace said ahead of the squad announcement. “He can bowl and he is the best fielder. You are going to bring him in as soon as he is available. It might mean another shift in your batting order but he’s not a bad bloke to be coming into your team.”Stokes’ return means bad news for Sam Billings, the Kent captain who has failed to grab his opportunities in his intermittent outings in England’s power-packed middle-order. He made 12 from 14 balls as England tripped up in their run-chase against Scotland at the Grange earlier this month, and 11 from 18 balls in his solitary outing against Australia at Cardiff, when Eoin Morgan pulled out with a back spasm on the morning of the game.Billings will, however, get a high-profile opportunity to restate his credentials when he leads Kent in the final of the Royal London One-Day Cup, against Hampshire at Lord’s on Saturday.England’s other notable injury absentee, Chris Woakes, has not been recalled to the squad at this stage, as he is still recovering from a torn right quad and a long-standing knee injury. However, if he proves his fitness, he could be added to the squad during the latter part of the ODI series.Sam Curran, who made his ODI debut against Australia at Old Trafford last week, having also made a Test debut against Pakistan earlier in the season, has been excluded from the squad, with his brother, Tom, ahead of him in the pecking order now that he has recovered from a niggle.

Big Picture

Bangladesh have a chance to wrap up the three-match ODI series with a win in the second game at the Providence Stadium, just as West Indies will be looking to level it. The visitors’ first good day in nearly a month in the Caribbean has suddenly livened up the tour.Tamim Iqbal scored a century, Shakib Al Hasan came within three runs of a century, Mushfiqur Rahim struck his fastest innings in ODIs and Mashrafe Mortaza got his first four-wicket haul in nearly two years. It all managed to bring back a cricket team battered and bruised in the Test series. The format surely helped, as Bangladesh have been more consistent in ODIs than in Tests and T20Is.Wednesday should also be an opportunity to rectify their bowling in the death overs, after they conceded a 59-run stand for the tenth wicket with tail-enders Alzarri Joseph and Devendra Bishoo making 29 runs each. They would also look into how they bat in the last 10 overs, given the slow gear change that nearly derailed their innings. Anamul Haque too has to contribute, given how Liton Das is breathing down his neck.The home side has more to worry about. Their bowling attack lacked the killer instinct that was omnipresent in the Test series, while their batsmen looked to be waiting only for boundary balls. Chris Gayle battled 60 balls for his 40, but he was perhaps the only one who looked to have read the pitch properly. Shimron Hetmyer who made a half-century, was guilty of a mix-up with Gayle. West Indies also have to take their catches properly, having given Shakib and Tamim a number of chances to regain composure.

Form guide

West Indies: LLWWL (last five matches, most recent first)
Bangladesh: WLLWW

In the spotlight

In his ODI comeback, Andre Russell was too short at the start and not full enough towards the end, feeding Mushfiqur Rahim in his hitting zone. Russell did slam a huge six but it wasn’t enough for West Indies who would expect a little more from this blockbuster allrounder.After almost two years, Mehidy Hasan Miraz has started to look like a confident bowler. His six-wicket haul in the second Test has boosted a career that looked to be going stagnant. He took just one wicket on Sunday, but Mehidy had better control against a volatile batting line-up.

Team news

Kieran Powell and Keemo Paul are waiting in the wings but unless West Indies decide to add an extra batsman, it is likely to be the same XI.West Indies (probable): 1 Chris Gayle, 2 Evin Lewis, 3 Shai Hope (wk), 4 Jason Mohammed, 5 Shimron Hetmyer, 6 Jason Holder (capt), 7 Rovman Powell, 8 Andre Russell, 9 Devendra Bishoo, 10 Ashley Nurse, 11 Alzarri JosephWhether they stick with Anamul Haque or bring in Liton Das is perhaps the only question the Bangladesh team management has to ponder.Bangladesh (probable): 1 Tamim Iqbal, 2 Anamul Haque, 3 Shakib Al Hasan, 4 Mushfiqur Rahim (wk), 5 Mahmudullah, 6 Sabbir Rahman, 7 Mosaddek Hossain, 8 Mehidy Hasan Miraz, 9 Mashrafe Mortaza (capt), 10 Rubel Hossain, 11 Mustafizur Rahman

Pitch and conditions

The visitors will once again pin their hopes on a Providence Stadium pitch that offers turn and bounce, although how it behaves in the second session would be a mystery to them.There’s a lot of rain in the forecast, so delays and disruptions wouldn’t be a total surprise.

Stats and trivia

• After his four wickets in the first ODI, Mashrafe Mortaza has now taken at least four in a match on eight occasions in ODIs. For Bangladesh, that ties him with Rubel Hossain and Shakib Al Hasan, with only Abdur Razzak up ahead with nine such performances
• Alzarri Joseph’s unbeaten 29 is West Indies’ second highest score for a No. 11, behind Joel Garner who made 37 against India during the 1983 World Cup

Quotes

“Guayana is much like Bangladesh, if you look at the pitches, the soil, etc. It is a positive thing for us. We have an important match tomorrow, so we are looking forward to it.”
Shakib Al Hasan

Pakistan’s batting failed to step up for a second successive game against India. On Sunday, they were only a shade better than in their previous meeting, in which they had made 162. A target of 238 hardly challenged Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma, who flattened Pakistan’s attack with centuries in a 210-run opening stand.Pakistan coach Mickey Arthur has put the team’s batting failures down to a ‘confidence crisis’ within the team, but insisted the hard knocks from the Asia Cup would help the players learn as they build forward.”They’re suffering a confidence crisis at the moment, there’s a little bit of fear of failure in the dressing room, there’s a bit of a reality check for exactly where we are as a cricket team,” Arthur said. “In terms of the worst performance, nine wickets, it’s got to be up there but we’re on a journey, we’ll get better and stronger than this.”Arthur cited the example of Fakhar Zaman to underline the confidence crisis theory. Fakhar has looked far from settled when India have tried to attack him by bowling at the stumps, and has failed to provide his usual freewheeling starts. At the end of the first Powerplay on Sunday, he had limped to 12 off 31 balls.”We know cricket is a confidence game,” Arthur said. “Look at Fakhar Zaman, he’s an incredible player, he’s an X-factor player and we expect him to take the game on at the top of the order, but he’s doubting his game a little at the moment. We’ve got to just ride the wave with him. If we do that, when he comes out, he’ll be a better player for this. We’ve banked the work, the work is all done.”Arthur’s second concern was Pakistan’s bowlers and their deviation from set plans. Mohammad Amir has been wicketless for five straight ODIs now, stretching back to the tour of Zimbabwe in July. He’s now bowled 35.4 overs since taking his last ODI wicket, and this barren spell even led to his being left out of the game against Afghanistan on Friday.He was specifically brought back because Pakistan were playing India on a fresh surface with slightly more pace and carry compared to the other surfaces in this tournament, but his returns weren’t any better: 5-0-41-0. Shadab Khan too was rendered ineffective on the same surface where India’s wristspinners, Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav, bottled up Pakistan’s middle order and finished with combined figures of 4 for 87.”There was inconsistency in lines and lengths, and it’s disappointing,” Arthur said. “We went into panic mode. Once they got in, we started searching for wickets. The way you get wickets is, you’ve got to build pressure. We didn’t stay with our plans long enough. Our plans was to hit the hard lengths, hit top of off with our seamers, and then have the ability to put them under pressure in the middle. We’ve got to attack to take wickets, it didn’t happen and we weren’t patient enough. There were plans but they weren’t executed for long enough.”Associated Press

Arthur was effusive in his praise for Jasprit Bumrah’s death-bowling skills. Bumrah took 2 for 15 in his four-over spell at the end of the innings, nailing his yorkers perfectly, and Pakistan only managed 38 off their last seven overs.”We had an optional session the other day,” Arthur said. “We sat there for 20 minutes and I watched Jasprit Bumrah at the nets next to us, executing yorker after yorker after yorker, and he put that into practice here. In our review, we definitely will be showing our young bowlers his execution in the death overs, it was very good.”The Pakistan coach also disagreed that Sarfraz Ahmed’s captaincy was a reason for India walking home unchallenged. He explained that the decision to bat first, on what is increasingly looking like a chasing ground, was a collective one, taken only because the confidence crisis he referred to earlier could have hurt the batsmen while chasing, particularly against India’s spinners.”I have heard from the outside how we should’ve bowled first here, bat first there, but honestly, we look at how best we can win,” Arthur said. “We believe if we can get runs on the board and strike with the new ball, we can put India under pressure. We don’t want to expose our middle order against their spinners in a run chase, it’s going to just get bigger and bigger and bigger and our batsmen are going to get under pressure even more.”One of the solutions to the confidence crisis, he insisted, was to repose faith in the captain and allow him time and space to develop as a leader. “He’s great, his captaincy is growing,” he said, when asked if pressure was weighing Sarfraz down. “I’ve had the privilege to work with two outstanding captains (Graeme Smith and Michael Clarke), he’s the third. He’s a learning captain, the only one I’ve seen having a balance between on the field and off the field. Yes, we sit and debrief after every game in terms of tactics, he’s developing into a very, very good captain for Pakistan without a doubt.”There’s a silver lining for Pakistan yet. They still have a chance to make the final against India by beating Bangladesh on Wednesday. Arthur prescribed some fine-tuning of skills and mental make-up to help them bounce back.”It’s a confidence thing. Certainly in terms of the amount of work these guys have put in, it’s second to none,” he said. “These guys work every day on their catching, but the minute one goes down, it’s kind of like a disease. It catches off and catches on. It takes one good catch, one good innings or a five-for to turn it around and we will get the confidence back then. We’ve got to trust the skills to come out in the end. We’ve banked the work. It’s time for that to pay off.”

ScorecardCraig Miles marked his farewell match for Gloucestershire with a five-wicket haul before Luis Reece put Derbyshire back in the Division Two County Championship match at Derby.Miles, who is joining Warwickshire next season, took 5 for 50 as Derbyshire were bowled out for 184 with Reece top-scoring with 59 in his second game back after more than three months out with a broken foot. Wayne Madsen completed 1000 Championship runs for the season but Miles and Matt Taylor with 3 for 32 ran through the home side who responded when Reece took four wickets to reduce Gloucestershire to 100 for 5 at the close.On a day dominated by the seamers, Tony Palladino celebrated his 50th Championship wicket of the season four days after it was announced the 35-year-old has signed a new two year contract with Derbyshire.Gloucestershire’s bowlers had initially struggled with their radar after an uncontested toss and Reece took advantage of some wide and overpitched deliveries. He saw Billy Godleman edge a drive at Miles into his stumps and then watched as Madsen passed 1000 runs for the fifth time in six seasons with a boundary off Matt Taylor who had Reece spilled at third slip on 32.Madsen went soon after achieving his milestone when he was trapped in front by Ryan Higgins and after Reece clipped Miles off his legs for his eighth four to reach fifty, he edged a good ball from the seamer to second slip.Higgins found some late movement to bowl Tom Lace in the second over after lunch but Matt Critchley and Alex Hughes batted positively to add 51 before Miles started the slide that saw Derbyshire lose six wickets for 35.Critchley was lured into driving at a wide ball and Hughes was lbw pushing half forward, leaving Taylor to sweep away the tail in the space of two overs. Harvey Hosein played across the line, Hardus Viljoen was caught on the crease and Palladino offered no shot to one that swung back enough to clip the off stump.When Anuj Dal clipped Miles to fine leg, Derbyshire’s last four wickets had tumbled for 14 and the day threatened to get worse for the home side when Hosein dropped Chris Dent off Lockie Ferguson on 9.Palladino was rewarded for a probing opening spell when he bowled Miles Hammond but Gloucestershire were starting to take control until Reece delivered his best spell in the Championship. The allrounder got just enough seam movement to have James Bracey and Benny Howell lbw and his accurate line accounted for Ben Charlesworth and Dent as Derbyshire shaded an eventful day.

By virtue of being Sri Lanka’s former head coach, Nic Pothas has been part of a number of ODI battles against India. Having watched many India players achieve their peaks from close quarters, Pothas – who is now West Indies’ fielding coach – says it is the leadership system that is the reason for India’s success in the format.”As I said, they’re a world-class team. I love the way they go about planning. I’ve got a good relationship with their coaching staff as well as some of their players. So I’m aware of how they go about planning and I love it,” Pothas said. “Their work on a day-to-day basis, how they plan into the future, and the standards that they expect of the team. This team is always going to look to improve. And it comes from Virat Kohli and from their coaching staff. Definitely, a role model type of leadership system. So you’re always going to see people improve.”When young guys come into this team, they get comfortable really quickly. They get up to speed very quickly. Yes, they have the skill level to be able to do that, but that comes from coming into a winning environment where your senior players are your mentors. That’s the reason why they’re at the top of their game in all three formats and they will be for a long period of time.”Having been brushed aside in the first ODI, West Indies had done phenomenally till they lost their way in the tied second ODI. In the next game in Pune, they caught India unaware with a clinical performance. With the series tied, however, they let up the pressure with a collapse in the fourth ODI that included two run-outs in a frenzied opening to the chase. Pothas conceded that on a long tour like this, fatigue could have crept in. Particularly with someone like Jason Holder, who is among the few players who were also part of the Test series.”It’s a possibility,” Pothas said. “Travelling to India is always wonderful. It’s a great tour to judge yourself on, [both] as a player and as a coach. You know it’s going to be tough when you come down here, I was fortunate to tour here last year with Sri Lanka. So I’ve had the experience before. Every time we walk onto the field, we’ve got to make sure our routines are good, our processes are good. You’ve got to compete. So yeah, fatigue is a possibility, but today is a great rest day for us, and our guys are professionals.”Jason is a world-class performer. We want to have him on the field every day for 365 days of the year. 24X7, if we could. [But] he’s a human being, not a robot. In India, England, Australia, you can rest players as you have real quality coming through behind them. Unfortunately, we’re not at that place where we can rest players when we want to, but, we’ve got to be realistic as well. Jason plays a lot of cricket and it’s not just what he does on the field. As a leader and as a captain, he’s doing a lot of work off it as well.”West Indies have already performed at a greater level than was widely expected of them before the series, and a 2-2 result would be a relative success if they were to clinch the final ODI at the Greenfield Stadium. But getting through India’s top four has been a particular challenge so far. Pothas, however, said they had plans.”Look, if I had special plans – which I do – I’m certainly not going to put them out in the media! But having said that, they’re world-class cricketers. You can’t go without mentioning guys like Shikhar Dhawan. Rayudu is in form. Lots of fantastic players – that’s what you get with such a strong team. They’re a great team to learn from. We don’t just play against India, we learn from them too. These are great opportunities when you come and play against teams of this quality.”West Indies are in the late stages of building up for next year’s World Cup and are yet to comfortably escape their long-standing battles with player availability. In that scenario, they’ve had to fast-track several young players into their squad. Before the start of this series, West Indies had named nine players who had played fewer than 20 ODIs.”It’s a very young team,” Pothas said. “Not just from an international point of view but a volume of 50-over cricket point of view. I think when you play at this level, whatever sport it might be, it’s always going to come down to execution over a long period of time. We’ve seen that we can execute for short periods of time.”The challenge is always going to be to execute over a 100 overs. If you’re going to beat India or England or Australia or Pakistan, you’ve got to execute for a 100 overs. And it takes physical ability, it takes skill, it takes mental ability. And fitness certainly comes in too. We go to Bangladesh next, we have a little break and we play England in the Caribbean. It’s a lot of cricket coming up. So physical fitness is always going to aid your recovery, it’s going to aid your decision-making and it’s going to aid your execution. So our young guys are learning all the time and they’re having to learn at the international level, which is never easy. But they’re getting better all the time and most importantly they’re open to that learning. So we’re very positive on them.”

Kings XI Punjab have appointed Ryan Harris, the former Australia quick, as the bowling coach for the 2019 IPL season. Harris replaces Venkatesh Prasad, who was in the position last year but resigned recently. Harris was the head coach of the Australia Under-19, who were runner-ups in the World Cup earlier this year.Kings XI, who finished seventh last season, also roped in former New Zealand batsman Craig McMillan as a fielding coach. McMillan, who is also the batting coach of New Zealand, is currently in the UAE for the ongoing Test series against Pakistan.”Having quality coaches like Harris and McMillan will be a great asset to the team,” Mike Hesson, who recently took over as head coach, said. “They have both performed as players on the big stage and have made the transition into quality coaches. They will be excellent additions to the coaching team.”The other appointments by made the franchise to bolster the support staff were that of Brett Harrop (physio), Sridharan Sriram (batting coach) and Prasanna Raman (high-performance coach).Apart from the ouster of former head coach Brad Hodge and Virender Sehwag, who was the tean Mentor and Head of Cricket Operations, Kings XI released eleven players, including Yuvraj Singh, Aaron Finch and Axar Patel, and traded Marcus Stoinis for Royal Challenger Bangalore’s Mandeep Singh. That has left them with the highest salary cap (INR 36.20 crores) among all franchises ahead of the auction.

Had Will Pucovski simply played out the remainder of the Sheffield Shield season with Victoria, 2018-19 would have already been an exceptionally momentous summer for him, given its rich mixture of experiences good and bad, great and small.As it stands, however, he is coming to terms with a year in which he compiled a monumental double century against Western Australia, stood out of the game for six weeks with mental health struggles, made a return to the fold with a refreshed outlook and coping strategies, and has now been rushed into the Australian Test squad to face Sri Lanka.If this seems a lot to digest, then Pucovski is taking solace from the fact that in those weeks between the 243 at the WACA Ground in October and his return to make scores of 1 and 67 also against Western Australia at the MCG in December, he learned an enormous amount about himself, his mental state and the tools he needed to manage himself and his cricket in the best ways possible. At the age of 20, Pucovski has been considered a talent of note for some time; he is hopeful the rapidity of his entry into Test calculations has coincided with critical life lessons.ALSO READ: How do Australia fix their batting before the Ashes?“I’m feeling really good, as good as I have felt in a really long time,” Pucovski said in Melbourne. “I’ve met some people along the way who have helped me turn things around. There is probably no better time to get exciting news like I have in the last 24 hours. It’s not every day you get called up to represent your country, so it’s been a very exciting couple of days.”Quite a bit sooner [than expected] to be honest. It’s every kid’s dream and to think in two weeks’ time there’s a chance I could be playing for your country is just amazing. You can’t even use words to describe it. It is one of those things … even the joy on your family and friends’ faces when you’ve told them or they’ve got the news, it makes you proud to make a lot of other people proud as well.”A lot of the messages I’ve received today is you’ve got there for a reason, so just try to play your way and embrace that as much as you can. My challenge if I do get picked is to do that, and just try to bat the way I bat, prepare the way I prepare. If things work out, that’s great, but for a 20-year old, it’s just super exciting either way.”A history of concussions had been one complicating factor for Pucovski on his journey through junior ranks into the Victoria side, but it was the spectre of mental health problems that overcame him even as he was embarking upon the innings in October that put his name clearly in the sights of a national selection panel so transparently desperate to find the next great talent as opposed to merely good ones. At first, he confided in Victoria coaches Lachlan Stevens and Andrew McDonald, before linking up with Emma Murray, the mindfulness coach so valuable to the 2017 premiership success of Richmond in the AFL.”They’ve been amazing throughout the whole process,” Pucovski said of the batting coach Stevens and head coach McDonald. “I actually told them what had been going on in Perth, and they’ve been super supportive along the whole pathway back to cricket and then playing that Shield game. As a young man, you can’t really ask for much more than two coaches who are super supportive of you. They basically said ‘mate just sort all that stuff out and your cricket will take care of itself’.”I met a lady called Emma Murray who has worked quite a bit with Richmond, and had a bit of attention with how they have turned things around. She has been a mentor in that space. I have added things like I am meditating every morning, which I honestly never really believed in until she got me on to it and things like that have helped me turn things around. I speak to her regularly and am seeing another woman who helps me with a few different things. Having that team together makes me feel really supported and in a good space to deal with that kind of stuff.”Much of Murray’s work revolves around keeping athletes in the moment, and teaching them ways to return to a state of focus and concentration as quickly as possible following distractions. For Pucovski, these were valuable lessons for someone who had already shown an innate ability to score centuries – exactly what Trevor Hohns’ panel have been crying out for this summer, as they watched the Australian Test team fail to make a single score higher than 79 across four Tests against India.ALSO READ: Will Pucovski is on the cusp of great thingsBy the time Pucovski returned in December, he was far better equipped to manage his own expectations and thoughts, at the same time as he returned to familiar and comfortable surroundings with Victoria. “I think it was just that knowledge that I had enough strategies in place that whatever came across from a cricketing perspective in those four days, that I’d be able to deal with it,” Pucovski said.”That well and truly proved to me that I’m able to do that in a four-day period, and then as I said, dealing with a few things outside of cricket has really helped, and Emma has really helped me with that stuff. It’s been a really positive experience over the last couple of months.”I’ve just always tried to bat for as long as I can. If that comes off sometimes, then that’s great and if it doesn’t, that’s part of the game. Probably just trying to take a more relaxed outlook on it has helped me especially in the last couple of years. I try and follow my process as closely as I can and hopefully the results take care of themselves. It’s one of those sports where, as an individual, you are going to fail quite a bit. Getting better at dealing with that has probably helped me quite a bit.”Given the level of scrutiny placed on the Australian Test team in the season after the Newlands scandal, it is natural to wonder how Pucovski may cope with a spotlight that will be squarely on him over the next two weeks, whether turning out for a Cricket Australia XI against the Sri Lankans in a Hobart day-night tour game, or assembling with Tim Paine’s team in Brisbane for their final series prior to the most prestigious of all – an Ashes tour of England later this year. Asked whether there is any danger of a Test call-up clouding the work he has steadily done with Murray and others, Pucovski was optimistic.”It comes to mind but I don’t think so,” he said. “I feel like I am in a really good space, and the people I am working with think so too. It’s one of those things where it is a day-by-day proposition for me that I have to manage. I think it is a good thing to invest time in. I feel like I have done quite a bit of work over the past few months and was able to play that Shield game and loved every minute of it. I feel like I am back in action.”One of the favourite sayings of the selector Greg Chappell is that “talent is a bit like fruit – if you don’t pick it when it’s ripe, it goes rotten”. Both Australia’s selectors and Pucovski are earnestly hoping that the moment of his picking for Test match duty is not a moment too soon.

West Indies are set to be without Sunil Narine and Andre Russell for their ODI series against England.Narine has informed CWI that he is not yet confident enough in his bowling action to get through an ODI, while Russell has  informed them his knee is not yet up to the demands of 50-over cricket.Narine hasn’t played an ODI for more than two years, but insists he is keen to return to international cricket. He has struggled with his action for most of his career, first attempting to remodel it in 2011 and then having it reported during the Champions Trophy of 2014.He withdrew from the 2015 World Cup squad to work further on his action. He is expected to work with Carl Crowe, the spin bowling consultant, in the coming weeks. The news almost certainly ends any chance he has of playing in the 2019 World Cup.Russell’s involvement remains possible. He is fit enough for T20 cricket – he has been involved in the BPL and has just been announced as a replacement for Steve Smith in the PSL – but feels his fitness is not quite at the required level for a longer game. He last played an ODI in July.

Stumps Two contrasting innings – an aggressive 95 from Mayank Agarwal and a dogged 114 from Hanuma Vihari – took Rest of India to 330 before they were bowled out at stumps against Vidarbha on the first day of the Irani Cup match in Nagpur, leaving the Ranji Trophy champions the happier side at close of play.From 171 for one, RoI lost their next nine wickets for only 159 runs as they suffered a collapse, brought about by some top-quality bowling chiefly from Vidarbha’s spinners.The turnaround began with Agarwal’s dismissal in the 39th over. Shortly after surviving a close lbw shout, he checked his drive and holed out at cover, handing Yash Thakur (playing in place of the injured Umesh Yadav) his only wicket of the day.Ajinkya Rahane, the RoI captain, then followed after making 13 in a 14-run stand with Vihari. Shreyas Iyer (11) didn’t last long either, defending down the wrong line to the left-arm spin of Akshay Karnewar, and right at the stroke of tea, Ishan Kishan (2) holed out trying to smash Akshay Wakhare over the leg-side infield. After conceding 142 for one in the first session, Vidarbha’s bowlers had some reason to smile at tea; they took four wickets in the second session for only 92 runs.It got better for them at the start of the evening session. K Gowtham, the No. 8, perished trying to clear midwicket, and Aditya Sarwate’s left-arm spin got the better of Dharmendrasinh Jadeja. At 258 for seven, Vidarbha would have backed themselves to wrap up the RoI innings for under 300, but in Rahul Chahar, Vihari found a stable partner, and they rotated the strike well. The two added 49 for the eighth wicket, taking RoI past 300 before the partnership was broken by Sarwate.Mayank Agarwal hits one over the infield•Getty Images

In the morning, Agarwal started brilliantly, using the width on offer from new-ball bowler Rajneesh Gurbani to crack two boundaries in the very first over. He then took on Sarwate – just like he dealt with Nathan Lyon on Test debut at the MCG – using his feet to play inside-out lofted shots over the off side. It mostly went his way, barring the time wicketkeeper Akshay Wadkar failed to hold on to the edge from an attempted cover drive.Vihari, too, rode on some luck. When he was yet to get off the mark, a length ball from Thakur whizzed past his outside edge. There was a loud appeal from the Vidarbha players for caught behind, but the umpire was unmoved. Replays showed some deviation off the bat, but with no DRS in play, the decision remained.When Agarwal and Vihari batted together in the first session following Anmolpreet Singh’s dismissal for 15, they scored at more than five per over for the most part.The post-lunch session began with Vihari reaching his half-century with a flurry of boundaries in the 38th over. He took on Sarwate, hitting two fours and a six – straight back over the bowler’s head – to reach his half-century. Later in the day, in the 77th over, he skipped down the track to hammer a straight drive to reach his 16th first-class hundred. It was an innings that was appreciated by those in his corner, and the sparse crowd that had come to the ground on a Tuesday afternoon. It looked like he would finish the day unbeaten, but Sarwate – the man who Vihari had punished earlier on – found the outside edge of his attempted cut shot, and the ball went straight to Faiz Fazal at slip.Among the Vidarbha bowlers, Wakhare had the day’s best figures – three for 62 – while Sarwate, despite starting poorly, also had three wickets. As the sun baked the pitch, Sarwate found more turn, removing both Jadeja and Vihari in quick succession. Gurbani, too, found reward for bowling a stump-to-stump line, pegging the leg stump of both Anmolpreet and Chahar to finish with two for 58. Left-arm spinner Akshay Karnewar, who also experimented with a right-arm delivery for one ball in the afternoon, and Thakur had one each.The second day will begin with Vidarbha’s batsmen trying to edge in front, but they are without Wasim Jaffer. The talismanic top-order batsman failed a fitness test before the game after spraining his ankle. For RoI, much of their chances will depend on how spinners Chahar and Jadeja fare. After all, in the Ranji Trophy this season, spinners took 67 of the 99 wickets that fell in Nagpur.