India vs England 2021: Had India Batted First They Could Have Put A Big Total As Well - Kevin Pietersen Feels England Got The Advantage Of Toss

Former England captain, Kevin Pietersen says that England’s victory over India in Chennai in the first Test of the series was ‘fantastic’ but not ‘historic’ as the visitors got the crucial advantage of winning the toss.

Joe Root continued his thunderous form with the bat and struck his career’s 5th double century – second in the last three Tests – as England posted 578 runs in the first innings while batting for more than two days. The visitors won the game by a massive margin of 277 runs and take a – unforeseen – lead in the series.

Kevin Pietersen, meanwhile, is impressed by the team putting a good performance, however, the former stylish batsman feels that the pitch was tailor-made for batting first and winning the game as it played out really flat on the first two days with little assistance to the bowlers. He even believes that India could have also made such a big total had Virat Kohli won the toss and batted first.

“It’s fantastic that England won the first Test match – they put in a really solid performance and it sets up the series beautifully. But it was a ‘win the toss, win the Test match’ sort of wicket, so batting well on days one and two and giving India absolutely no chance of winning the game is not historic by any stretch of the imagination,” said Kevin Pietersen as quoted by Sportskeeda.

“If India had batted first, I think they could have put something similar on the board. Would England have been able to bat second and chase the game? I’m not so sure,” he added.

It would be really sad if a similar wicket is prepared for the second Test: Kevin Pietersen

Kevin Pietersen, who made a significant contribution to England’s series triumph in Australia and India, says that it would be really unfair if the pitch in the second Test is prepared as same as the first Test because then the fate of the teams will largely depend on the toss.

“I’m interested to see whether a similar wicket is prepared for the second Test because it would be really sad if it’s the same scenario – win the toss and win the match.

I don’t want to take anything away from England, it’s a great victory. But I think the talk of it being one of the great wins in their history is a bit much considering that it was given an awful lot of help by the flip of a coin,” the 40-year-old added.

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