Keaton Jennings reacts to Virat Kohli's mic-drop celebration

Root's run-out proved to be the turning point.

Published - 02 Aug 2018, 10:14 IST | Updated - 02 Aug 2018, 10:14 IST

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It seems that the Indian captain Virat Kohli was eager to ‘payback’ his English counterpart Joe Root’s act of dropping the bat after hitting the winning runs at Headingley last month became evident through his gesture made after running him out on the first day of the Test match. English opener Keaton Jennings who scored 42 and put up a crucial 72-run partnership with Root for the second wicket, however, felt it was “cool”.

Kohli produced a direct throw from midwicket with the sun in his eyes to dismiss the in-form Root and blew a kiss in the general direction of the outgoing batsman and put a finger to his lip.

“Everybody is entitled to celebrate how they want to. He celebrated, and that’s cool,” Jennings told the media after the day’s play ended, though denied that India had an upper hand in the Test.

We’ve runs on the board

“You look, after 85 overs with an old ball, there still seems to be quite a lot of lateral movement. From our point of view, we’ve got (nearly) 300 on the board – and if we can come out and be pretty relentless in the way we go about hitting our areas, at some point tomorrow…, you don’t actually know what a good score is until both sides have batted,” he further added

As per radio commentators, it was Kohli’s payback to Root over his ‘drop the mike’ gesture made after winning the ODI series for England last month, hitting back to back unbeaten centuries. Though Root, who is England’s captain in Tests, later referred to his act as embarrassing but Kohli was certainly waiting for his chance much like his predecessor Sourav Ganguly did against Andrew Flintoff’s ‘bare bodied’ act in 2002.

Root top-scored for England on the first day of the first of the five Tests and his dismissal saw England losing their way a bit after getting a good start. At stumps on Day 1, England were 9 down for 285 with Ravichandran Ashwin taking four for 60.