At the stroke of 30 minutes at the crease, Yashasvi Jaiswal jogged across for a single.

He wouldn’t have known it in that moment but he had just become personally responsible for two of the four fastest fifties India have ever recorded as a team in Test cricket.

A wave of applause swept the ground, made slightly eerie by how some of it seemed to be coming out of loudspeakers at the ground. There were 21,000 people here. They didn’t need amplifying.

Jaiswal struck the first ball of the innings for four and the first ball of spin for six. Ben Stokes had taken a gamble by having a debutant open the bowling. It backfired to the extent that in the UK, Simon Kerrigan, who was thrown into an Ashes Test match only to be mauled for 6.62 an over and never seen in Test cricket ever again, began trending.

Tom Hartley’s day (9-0-63-0) made it clear that spinners aren’t guaranteed success even if conditions are in their favour. They have to put it in the right spot.

India, themselves, needed a little time to come to terms with that.

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The forward defensive in a cricket match is like the blue in the sky. It’s everywhere.

England have recently been doing something to make it rare and for a little while they were having success here too.

R Ashwin was bowling to a fresh-to-the-crease, battling-with-something-in-his-eye Jonny Bairstow with three men on the leg side boundary.

Rohit Sharma was asking his best fielder Ravindra Jadeja to go as far back at point as he has ever gone in the first session of a Test match. The run-rate was hovering around five after the first 10 overs.

Bazball had pushed India back.

So India made Bazball come forward. And defend. Because the forward defensive on a spinning pitch is like a freshman at a college party. It can be a bit awkward.

Ben Duckett played for spin and got lbw. Jonny Bairstow played for the straight ball and got bowled. Both times India dragged the batters onto the front foot but prevented them any other luxury. They couldn’t get to the pitch to smother the turn. They didn’t have room to free the arms. The stumps were in play so they couldn’t hit across the line without taking a risk. They also didn’t stray on the pads so the flick for single wasn’t on. And of course, no one could quite tell which way it was going to turn.

None of this had anything to do with the pitch. It was just discipline taken to a whole other level.

Ashwin and Axar Patel, in particular, were able to hold this in-between length for long enough that it triggered two England collapses, 3 for 5 and 3 for 16.

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Hartley, Jack Leach and Rehan Ahmed all turn the ball into the left-hander. And only one of them has Test match experience of any consequence. So when they tried to bowl full and bring India forward, they went too full, and India could come forward with glorious abandon.

Jaiswal seems to pick up an opportunity to attack quicker than most others. It was almost predatory the way he went after a spin bowling attack that was one part solid and two parts hope. Almost similar deliveries were being dispatched with a slog sweep over midwicket and with inside-out drives through cover. And as if that wasn’t enough, he began charging at them too.

England might just be able to match India’s batting in this series but the difference in the quality of the bowling was stark. Hartley really had no one to lean on like Axar did when he come on to bowl.

“[Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja] come and tell me, this is what is happening from this part of the wicket, and that becomes a plus point and I am aware of what I need to do,” Axar said. “We keep having these conversations during matches. I have a lot of fun bowling with them. They’ve been playing for so many years, so it’s a plus point.”

It almost felt unfair.