Butcher falls early as England reach 53/1

Mohali, December 3: Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly won the toss and put England in to bat on the opening day of the first Test here on Monday.

England had a bad start , losing Mark Butcher in the first over of the morning after Nasser Hussain lost his tenth straight Test toss. Then Hussain and Trescothick batted positively against an inexperienced pace attack, reaching 53/1 in the 12th over.

Teams :

India: Sourav Ganguly (capt), Shiv Sunder Das, Rahul Dravid, V V S Laxman, Sachin Tendulkar, Deep Dasgupta (WK), Harbhajan Singh, Anil Kumble, Tinu Yohannan, Sanjay Bangar, Iqbal Siddiqui.

England: Nasser Hussain (capt), Mark Butcher, Marcus Trescothick, Graham Thorpe, Mark Ramprakash, Richard Dawson, James Foster (WK) , Matthew Hoggard, James Ormand, Craig White, Andrew Flintoff.

Umpires : S Venkataraghvan and Steve Bucknor

Match referee : Denis Lindsay