Ind vs Eng: How Is 4th Test Pitch Looking After The First Day's Play

Thanks to a bit of grass, the pitch for the fourth and final Test is likely to hold up for a bit longer than the surfaces did in the preceding two Tests which had led to a lot of debate.

Some puffs of dust though were evident right after tea even on the first day but it didn't seem bad.

However, the pitch will continue to help spinners more as the match progresses making it difficult for batsmen.

Despite a better pitch, spinners had a dominant presence on the first day's play of this Test.

Left-arm spinner Axar Patel was brought in as early as the sixth over of the day and he managed a wicket in his first over again. The first session saw spinners bowling almost 50 percent of the overs - 12 out of 25.

The three spinners - Patel, R. Ashwin, and Washington Sundar - bowled 70.6 percent of overs in England's first innings that ended just after tea. The trio combined to pick eight of the 10 wickets.

The newly-built stadium at Motera, that has been renamed as the Narendra Modi Stadium, has 11 strips with six of them red soil and five black soil.

There had been criticism from former players and experts of the pitches dished out for the first second and third Tests that saw the ball spinning from the first session onwards.

The players from the two sides had, however, refrained from lashing out at the pitches.