India captain Rohit Sharma won the toss and elected to field against Australia in the World Test Championship final played at the Kennington Oval, London starting Wednesday, June 7, 2023. The overcast conditions at the toss might have tempted India to play four seamers as Mohammed Shami took the new ball along with Mohammed Siraj. The two Australia openers were circumspect to start with before Siraj got rid of Usman Khawaja, who didn't trouble the scorers much in the first session of play on Day 1.
David Warner and Marnus Labuschagne weathered the early storm and added 69 for the second wicket before Shardul Thakur struck for India once again as the swashbuckling left-hander took the long way back to the dressing room. In between, both the players played some scintillating shots at the Oval as batting got a bit easier with the sun coming out in the second half of the first session. But all was not that easy to start with for Australia.
Both the new ball bowlers for India, Shami, and Siraj went past the outside edge on several occasions in the first session of play. The batters had to be mindful of the seam and swing on offer for the bowlers along with the extra bounce that, at times, took both Warner and Labuschagne by surprise. So much so, that in the eighth over, Labuschagne was struck on the thumb by Siraj which forced him to drop his bat almost immediately - such was the impact.
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The extra bounce that Siraj extracted from the pitch did him in but Labuschagne stood firm in taking Australia to 73 for 2 at lunch on the first day of the Test match. Twitter almost immediately reacted to the incident with one user claiming to have allegedly heard Shubman Gill telling Siraj to break Labuschagne's finger - in a way encouraging the bowler to continue to bowl the same length and not by any means provoking him to do it literally.
Timesnownews.com cannot independently verify the incident and is not in possession of any video evidence to prove the user's claim. The 28-year-old, however, soon took the long walk back to the dressing room as Shami delivered another peach of a delivery to clean up the right-hander. Rohit Sharma would be hopeful that his bowlers can restrict Australia to a below-par first-innings score and anything close to 250 might be a little too challenging on that Oval pitch that has quite a bit of assistance for the fast bowlers.