Gill and Rahul hundreds put India in command on day one in Mullanpur

India turned the first Test match ever staged at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium into a batting exhibition, closing the opening day against Afghanistan on 368 for 3. Shubman Gill, captaining India in a Test on his home turf for the first time, finished unbeaten on 103, and KL Rahul made exactly 100 alongside him on a day Afghanistan’s bowlers will want to put behind them.

Gill won the toss under a fierce Punjab sun and chose to bat, and the decision looked shrewd within the first hour and beyond argument by stumps. The surface in Mullanpur offered next to nothing for the seamers, and once India weathered a brief early wobble, the runs came at better than four an over for the rest of the day.

Rahul and Sudharsan lay the platform

Yashasvi Jaiswal fell early for 24, edging behind to give Afghanistan a fleeting moment of belief. It did not last. Rahul and Sai Sudharsan came together for the stand that shaped the innings, the pair adding well over a hundred for the second wicket as Afghanistan’s attack toiled without luck.

Sudharsan, increasingly assured every time he walks out at the top of India’s order, looked set for a hundred of his own before he nicked off for 81. Rahul pushed on to three figures, his 12th Test hundred arriving off 165 balls, only to fall a single delivery later, caught at short extra cover. It was the third time he has been dismissed for exactly 100 in Test cricket, a quirk that took some of the gloss off an otherwise patient innings. India barely broke stride.

Gill marks his home Test with a hundred

There was a neatness to Gill raising his bat for a century in his first Test as captain, in front of a home crowd in Punjab. He reached the mark off 143 balls, in control throughout, and was still there at the close. For a player who has carried the weight of expectation since taking over the side, a hundred in front of a home crowd was about as comfortable an evening as he could have scripted.

Rishabh Pant joined him and played with the freedom that makes him such a difficult man to bowl to, reaching 50 not out off 70 balls. The pair were unseparated at stumps, their fourth-wicket stand worth more than a hundred and India looking to bat Afghanistan out of the match on day two.

A long day for Afghanistan

Afghanistan return to Test cricket in India eight years after their first appearance in the country, and they were given a stiff reminder of how far the gap can stretch on a flat pitch in punishing heat. Their bowlers stuck to their work through the afternoon but faded as the day wore on, the ball softening and the boundaries flowing.

The match does not count towards the World Test Championship, which gives India’s selectors licence to use it as a look at combinations before a tougher assignment against Sri Lanka later this year. On the evidence of day one, the batting order has answered the first of those questions in some style.

Follow all the day-two action from Mullanpur