Honours even as India reaches 72-2 at lunch after being put in by England in fifth cricket test

LONDON (AP) – England and India shared the honours after the first morning of the fifth and final cricket test at The Oval on Thursday.

After stand-in England captain Ollie Pope had won the toss and put India into bat, the tourists reached lunch on 72-2 as heavy rain cut the session short by five minutes.

The home team struck first with the score on 10-0, Gus Atkinson cutting the ball in from outside the off stump to trap Yashasvi Jaiswal lbw for 2.

Fellow opener KL Rahul then bottom-edged an attempted cut shot off Chris Woakes onto his off stump to leave India on 38-2.

Sai Sudharsan was 25 not out and skipper Shubman Gill unbeaten on 15 at the interval.

Pope is leading the England team in the absence of Ben Stokes, who is absent with a sore shoulder and was replaced in the side by Jacob Bethell.

Atkinson, Jamie Overton and Josh Tongue also replaced Jofra Archer, Brydon Carse and Liam Dawson in the bowling attack.

“There’s a bit more grass in the wicket this week, overcast conditions, it’s a no- brainer to bowl first,” Pope said.

India made four changes to its team with Karun Nair, Dhruv Jurel, Akash Deep and Prasidh Krishna coming in for Rishabh Pant, Jasprit Bumrah, Shardul Thakur and Anshul Kamboj.

Gill lost the toss for the fifth time in the series, meaning India has now gone 15 successive international matches without winning it.

“As long as we are winning the match I don’t mind losing the toss,” Gill said. “The wicket looks good so post runs in the first innings and take it from there.”

England leads the series 2-1.

Lineups:

England: Crawley, Duckett, Pope (captain), Root, Brook, Bethell, Smith, Woakes, Overton, Atkinson, Tongue.

India: Jaiswal, Rahul, Nair, Gill, Sudharsan, Jadeja, Sundar, Jurel, Deep, Siraj, Krishna.