India dominated proceedings in the first Test at Visakhapatnam and their charge was led by their batsmen, especially the openers who were both calculated as well as aggressive in their approach. Both Mayank Agarwal and Rohit Sharma were superb in the first innings and they were typically aggressive against the spinners.
Rohit was the star of the show with a century in both the innings and in the process, he became the batsman to hit the most number of sixes in Test match. In total, Rohit smashed 13 sixes in the Test to set a new world record. He went past former Pakistan captain Wasim Akram in the illustrious list as the southpaw had hit 12 sixes against Zimbabwe in 1996. Nathan Astle, Matthew Hayden, Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes take the tied third spot for hitting 11 sixes in their respective Tests.
South Africa, too, kept attacking the spinners, and although, they were not as successful with this approach, the sixes count kept on increasing right through the match. When Dane Piedt smoked Jadeja for a six, the number of sixes in the match shot up to 36 and it broke the previous record of 35 sixes which was made in the match between Pakistan and New Zealand back in 2014 in Sharjah.
Cheteshwar Pujara, after a sluggish start, got going on day 4 and said that Rohit batting at an impressive strike rate helped him to settle down. Talking about Rohit’s batting and his second hundred of the series, Pujara was all praise.
“The way Rohit was batting, I felt we were scoring at a decent pace and I could take some extra time to settle down. He batted really well in the first innings also but in the second innings, situation was different. (Especially), to play all those strokes that he did on this wicket.
