Kohli laments "first innings difference" after Chepauk defeat

As India walked out in pursuit of the remaining 381 runs of their target on Day 5 in Chennai, all bets were perhaps off with respect to where this Test was headed. England were unabashedly dominant for most parts of the game and expected to go 1-0 up, but recent events and India's understanding of home conditions meant it wasn't beyond them to pull off another late heist.

Those aspirations though, took a sharp turn with Jack Leach's delivery to Cheteshwar Pujara in the morning session, which spun and bounced more than the No. 3 anticipated and carried an outside edge to Ben Stokes.

Just 38 overs - and a reverse swing masterclass from James Anderson - later, India succumbed to their first home defeat in Tests since 2017, doffing their hats to England for their clinical start to a tough series. In the aftermath of the defeat, Virat Kohli reckoned the gulf in performances in the first innings sowed the seeds of India's downfall.

"I think the Test probably shifted in their favour when we batted in the first innings. Because we were looking to bat long and we were not able to do that," Virat Kohli said in the post-match presentation on Tuesday (February 9). There was not enough application shown by us in the batting unit, something that we take a lot of pride in."

Before Leach was turning the ball square and kicking up thick puffs of dust on Day 5, he went through one of the cruelest phases of Test match bowling in the first innings. Rishabh Pant afforded Leach, or the slight rough outside his off stump, no respect and dispatched sixes at will over Joe Root's deep leg side fields.

But that it came to Rishabh throwing his bat around by the second session on Day 3 was India's problem. Before that, when the Chepauk pitch was still as slow and flat as it was when Root & Co. made merry, India's batsmen