India v England, fourth Test: live OVER 23: ENG 37/2 Trott 22* Pietersen 10* Pietersen comes a long way down the pitch - into no-going-back territory - and drives Chawla powerfully through mid-off. Long-off is back on the fence, which even to Pietersen just strikes me as fundamentally wrong on so many levels. I mean, it's the first morning of a Test match. And surely you want Pietersen to take on the lofted drive this early in his innings? One off the over. OVER 22: ENG 36/2 Trott 22* Pietersen 9* Ojha gets a rest and Jadeja gets a change of ends. So not only is Ashwin behind Jadeja in the queue, he's also behind Jadeja's second spell. Trott plays out a maiden. OVER 21: ENG 36/2 Trott 22* Pietersen 9* Speaking of leg spin, here's Piyush Chawla for his first bowl of the morning. How must Ravi Ashwin be feeling? He started this series as a new ball bowler, and ended up as fourth choice. Some excellent drift early on from Chawla, and some turn out there for him too. Trott turns a single off his pads. Pietersen tries to drive down the ground, but can't beat the infield. OVER 20: ENG 35/2 Trott 21* Pietersen 9* Pietersen blocks out another maiden. John Herron from Mexico emails on the subject of Hashim Amla. "I know that he dominated the last Test versus Australia," he writes. But apart from the run out, how did the Aussies get him early when he was immovable in England throughout the summer? What did they know that England didn't? Well, given Amla averaged 63 with two centuries in three Tests, it wasn't exactly an unmitigated failure for him. His two real failures were in Adelaide, when he fell to spin both times. In the second innings he simply edged a straight one from Nathan Lyon to slip. In the first innings, though - and this was pretty funny - he came shuffling down the pitch to the part-time leg-spin of David Warner and ended up getting stumped. OVER 19: ENG 35/2 Trott 21* Pietersen 9* Jadeja beats Trott outside off stump with the first one he's spun all morning. Trott played for no spin, there was a little, and there are oohs from Dhoni and Sehwag behind the stumps. Best over Jadeja's bowled all morning. OVER 18: ENG 35/2 Trott 21* Pietersen 9* Pietersen plays out a maiden. Meanwhile, Swann's playing the fool on the England balcony. He looks like he's doing an impression of someone. Cook pretends to look amused. OVER 17: ENG 35/2 Trott 21* Pietersen 9* Ahhh, that's a lovely shot from Trott, coming down the pitch and wafting it back past Jadeja, through mid-on for four. Jadeja doesn't look all that to me. Not much flight, not much turn. It's like he's miming being a left-arm spinner. That'll get you a stack of wickets in the IPL, but I'm not convinced he's going to run through England this morning. OVER 16: ENG 31/2 Trott 17* Pietersen 9* India are rather excitably appealing for everything here, as if someone replaced the water in their drinks bottles with liquid Haribo. First an appeal off the front foot as Pietersen defends perfectly safely - with his bat. Then Pietersen comes down the pitch and kicks it away again, and there's a huge appeal for that. India have already had one dodgy leg before this morning, and they're on the hunt for another. OVER 15: ENG 31/2 Trott 17* Pietersen 9* What Cook and Compton found out the hard way, and what Trott is gradually learning, is that you have to play positively on a surface like this. It's cracked like broken biscuit, so at any moment there could be a ball with your name on it. But if you can get yourself in quickly, you can minimise the chances of one of those balls getting you early. Trott tries to flick to leg, misses, and there's a stifled LBW appeal. OVER 14: ENG 31/2 Trott 17* Pietersen 9* Trott looks to have settled better than anyone so far. He gets down on one knee and paddles Ojha around the corner for another four. He looks for the quick single to finish the over, and almost gets Pietersen in trouble as Jadeja fires the throw into Dhoni. Pietersen was home by a couple of feet, although a direct hit would have finished him. Trott, meanwhile, runs straight into Ojha and the pair end up in an awkward embrace in front of a nonplussed Rod Tucker. Drink time, drink time. OVER 13: ENG 26/2 Trott 12* Pietersen 9* If you believe the hype, then KP has haunting visions of situations like this. Fearful apparitions of an ICC general meeting at which it is decided that all types of bowling other than left-arm spin are forthwith to be banned from the game. KP wakes up with a start, sits up, takes a swig of the family-sized can of Red Bull on his bedside table and returns to his dreams. Anyway, that's a lovely aggressive flick off his pads for three, and then after Trott gets a single, Pietersen takes a couple of steps down and belts it back over Jadeja's head, beautifully straight, for four. OVER 12: ENG 18/2 Trott 11* Pietersen 2* There's a loud shout for LBW against Pietersen, and an interesting one too. Essentially, Pietersen decided to pad away a straight ball, but did so by charging several yards down the pitch. It's certainly a novel approach, and umpire Rod Tucker thinks better of giving it out. Pietersen takes another single. Now, Ravindra Jadeja's going to bowl at the other end, giving Pietersen the Escherian nightmare of having to face left-arm spin at both ends. OVER 11: ENG 17/2 Trott 11* Pietersen 1* Short - very short - from Sharma, and Pietersen makes to sway out of the way before realising the ball's only going to bounce about as high as his thigh, and fending it off. He gets off the mark when Sharma bowls him another bouncer and Pietersen can swivel it away for a single. He almost swept that. There's a sort of nefarious genius to this pitch. It's like a child's playmat, a delightfully anti-cricket surface. Apparently it's at its best to bat on during days two and three, so this might end up not being a bad toss for India to lose. Cook lbw b Sharma 1 (28) ENG 16/2 Sawn off! The Greatest English Batsman To Ever Draw Breath gets a dodgy banana from Sharma and a dodgy decision from umpire Dharmasena, and suddenly England are in all sorts of trouble! It was nicely bowled by Sharma, pitching it on a length and bringing it back in a fraction. Cook got a decent stride in, but the ball hit his pad well before it hit his bat. The question was whether it was coming back enough to clip off-stump. I'm not entirely sure it was. OVER 10: ENG 16/1 Cook 1* Trott 11* Swept fine by Trott, beating the man at short fine leg and running away for four. He looks in good touch. Cook, meanwhile, looks to be having one of those Geoffrey Boycott hours. Just one run in the first 45 minutes. OVER 9: ENG 12/1 Cook 1* Trott 7* Trott trapped in front! This must be close! Umpire Dharmasena shakes his head! Gosh, Trott's escaped there. It was a vicious swinging delivery, spearing late into Trott's pads, and well pitched up. In fact, Trott was so utterly flummoxed by that ball that he took his bottom hand off the bat and was just about ready to walk off. Instead, Dharmasena reckoned the contact was just outside off-stump, and remarkably Hawkeye bears him out. That's a fabulous umpiring decision, because that looked as plumb as plum pie. England really struggling with the slowness and lowness of the pitch so far. If the rest of the England batting order are by any chance reading this blog, here's how you play at Nagpur. OVER 8: ENG 9/1 Cook 1* Trott 5* Interesting little tussle this, between Cook and Ojha. Ojha's spearing it in at Cook's leg-stump with a strong inner ring to cut off his singles. Cook's countering by stepping well across his stumps. A leg slip comes in. Cook can't get the ball away. OVER 7: ENG 9/1 Cook 1* Trott 5* Half-volley from Sharma - the first really bad ball he's bowled all morning - and the first really good shot we've seen from Trott, creaming it down the ground, in between bowler and mid-on, for four. OVER 6: ENG 5/1 Cook 1* Trott 1* Cook's finally off the mark, getting down on one knee and spanking Ojha over cow corner... all right, he turns it off his legs for one. Trott then gets another single down to mid-on, where Chawla is, I fancy, standing a couple of yards too deep. OVER 5: ENG 3/1 Cook 0* Trott 0* The rest of that over shows just how unusual that dismissal was. Sharma tests Trott with some more short stuff, but most of it barely gets above waist height, and the ones that do, bounce well in front of Dhoni. The ball that got Compton out just reared up on him a fraction. Compton c Dhoni b Sharma 3 (12) ENG 3/1 Ohhh, Compton will be going nuts about that! It was the first ball that bounced all day, and Sharma really had to bang that in to get any sort of elevation on it. Like Jamie Cullum, it was short and harmless, but for some reason Compton went on the back foot and tried to defend it. The ball just feathered the edge; Dhoni was able to grab it just before it died on him. That's a real choke for India, and you sense Compton's diary might have a few angry scrawls in it tonight. OVER 4: ENG 3/0 Cook 0* Compton 3* Compton watchfully blocks out the over before pushing the last ball to mid-off and setting enough for another scampered single. Ashwin throws at the stumps. He misses, but Compton was home. Here's Scyld Berry on why the ground at Nagpur will be so empty: As with all out-of-town stadiums, like the ones outside Southampton and Chester-le-Street, it is designed for middle-class car-owners. You can book a season ticket online, for a whole Test match. You can read more of that here. OVER 3: ENG 2/0 Cook 0* Compton 2* Compton gets a thickish inside edge through square leg for another single. Cook tries to turn a couple into the leg side, but there's a tight ring of three on that side of the wicket, cutting off Cook's favourite scoring area. OVER 2: ENG 1/0 Cook 0* Compton 1* Compton wants his first single, and he comes down the pitch to push the ball to mid-on, and screams Cook through for a run. A startled Cook is a touch slow off the mark, and if Chawla had thrown to Dhoni's end he might have struggled. As it is, Compton's well home. OVER 1: ENG 0/0 Cook 0* Compton 0* This is it for England. Bat, bat and bat. Make 500 and win the series. It would be 2007 in reverse, when India needed a draw to win the series and ended up batting for two days to make 664. And the early signs are that this was a crucial toss to win. There's no pace or bounce in the surface at all. By the end of day five we may as well be playing on your nan's carpet. Sharma starts with a maiden to Cook, nearly all of which he can leave. There's a delay before the start of the second over as a couple of groundstaff chuck some sawdust down on the bowling crease. Pragyan Ojha's going to share the new ball. 03.59 Off we go, then. Sharma to bowl to Cook. Two slips and a gully in place. The ground, shamefully, is almost empty. 03.58 Here's an email from Peter Rowntree: Good decision by England to pick Joe Root, his record shows he is probably as talented as Ali Cook at the same age. Interesting to read the Indian press over the last few days and their reaction to the struggles of their national side, a lot of emotive comment but reasoned analysis too. Amongst this the interesting point about the ever-growing gap in standards between international and domestic cricket. Seems to be a worldwide issue: Michael Clarke having to carry Australia; the struggles we are having to bring players like Finn, Bairstow, Taylor, Patel, Bopara, etc to make the grade. Yet England need to do this: if we move ahead to 2015 many of our side will have retired or be nearing retirement. We have to get these young players through. 03.45 Oh, man. India really are going for it. Four spinners. Ravindra Jadeja, he of the two triple hundreds in a month, replaces Yuvraj, and is probably a better bet than him in all three facets of the game. The other change is leg-spinner Piyush Chawla, who makes his third Test appearance replacing Zaheer Khan. India: Gambhir, Sehwag, Pujara, Tendulkar, Kohli, Jadeja, Dhoni (c & wk), Ashwin, Chawla, Sharma, Ojha England: Cook (c), Compton, Trott, Pietersen, Bell, Root, Prior (wk), Bresnan, Swann, Anderson, Panesar 03.34 "We're bringing in Joe Root," Cook tells Ravi Shastri. Shastri couldn't be less interested, and pushes him over to one side so he can talk to Dhoni. He'll probably get a duck now. England are, of course, batting. 03.30 Not to envelop you in bombast at a stage of the morning when you'd probably rather be enveloped in a large warm duvet, but this could be history in the making. England, lest you need reminding, need just a win or a draw in Nagpur to secure their first series win in India since 1984-85, a time before we knew about global warming or where the wreck of the Titanic was, a time before Eastenders or Live Aid or, I might add, me. Tyers was around then, he could probably tell you more about it than I could. The big news - and if you don't like surprises, you may want to sit down and get yourself a mug of something warm before reading on - is that Joe Root is set to make his England debut today, in place of Samit Patel. That's a big surprise, especially given that Jonny Bairstow and Eoin Morgan are still hanging around twiddling their thumbs, but Root seriously impressed by making 166 for the Performance Squad in Mumbai a couple of weeks ago. Paul Collingwood has just presented him with his cap. If you're not familiar with him, Root opens the batting for Yorkshire and will be 22 later this month. On the bowling front, it doesn't look like Steve Finn's going to make it. With Stuart Broad still out, that means Tim Bresnan is the likeliest replacement. India, rather comically, have picked a squad of 15 for this Test, which hardly speaks of a selection panel that knows what its best team is. Indecision is the least of their problems, though. The last week has seen a deluge of stories about rifts within the squad, rifts outside the squad, rifts amongst the coaching staff and rifts inside the board. MS Dhoni has been so busy denying stories of rifts that he hasn't even had a chance to have his weekly rift with the groundsman. The pitch? It's very dry, and very cracked. One can only assume, given that it's India, where it's hot and dry most of the time, that the pitch will only get drier and more cracked. Good for spin, but not bad for reverse swing either. There is a little grass on it, but it's really just for show, like a comedy moustache. Win the toss and bat, bat bat.