Is it a good day or a bad day?

The England cricket tour got underway with the first day of the first test in India this morning. This has not been the smoothest of tours so far with Andrew Flintoff taking over the captaincy from an injured Michael Vaughan. Things started well by winning the toss and deciding to bat, but on a flat wicket at the close of play England are 246-7. This makes it a bad day.

We started OK with a sound fifty partnership between Strauss and debutant Alastair Cook but lost wickets steadily with Bell only scoring 9 and Pieterson 15. These guys need to be scoring more runs than this. We cannot keep losing our 3rd and 4th batsmen so cheaply, it puts us into a defensive mode when we all know that we're much better attacking the bowling side. Captain Flintoff steadied the ship somewhat but was given out for 43 with a very dubious lbw decision. Worse was to follow as Jones was out to another dubious decision and Blackwell played on to leave them at 246-7 at stumps.

India will be well pleased with their days work today, on a batsmens wicket they have put themselves in the driving seat. England need to pray for one of Hoggards long innings for little runs hoping that Collingwood can build on his 50 and at least give us a respectable target