A nip in the air, a lush-green outfield, a nice covering of grass on the 22-yard strip. The English summer is well and truly underway with a fresh diet of potentially sumptuous Test cricket on the menu, the appetiser having already been thrown up last month when the hosts defeated Zimbabwe in a one-off, four-day Test in Nottingham.

The main course is now a little more than 24 hours away. Ben Stokes’s established England side against a new-look, relatively young Indian outfit under first-time Test captain Shubman Gill isn’t quite Goliath versus David, but for once, the weight of expectations will be more on the English shoulders than Indian when the first of five Tests begins at Headingley on Friday. That isn’t because the visitors are any less accomplished; it is just that especially from a specialist batter perspective, several in the Indian side are yet to play a Test on English soil.

Overhead conditions apply

The challenges in England are manifold — the Dukes ball, which can often develop a mind of its own, is just one of them. Overhead conditions can alter the course of an innings in the matter of a few overs, and even though surfaces are less seam-friendly in the Bazball era than previously, England is still perhaps the one place where no batter can ever feel ‘in.’