Innings of a lifetime is just reward for brave and resolute Bangar

Sanjay Bangar, at best a spirited bit-part cricketer, owed his selection for the Headingley Test Match as much as anything to default. Wasim Jaffer had blown it as an opener in the first two Tests, the left-arm seamer Ashish Nehra had to make way for Anil Kumble, so Bangar's tolerable medium pace therefore became an option.

He had also opened the batting in one of his five Tests – his last, earlier this year in the West Indies. When Sourav Ganguly won the toss, the Indian captain must have felt a little like biting his tongue when choosing to bat, even though he had forced his own hand by including two spinners. On a tricky pitch, the likelihood was that Bangar's batting would not count for much.

He need have had no such fears for Bangar, 29, played the innings of his lifetime, even allowing for the fact that he once made a hundred batting at No 7 against Zimbabwe. It was a bowlers' morning with the ball swinging, and a bowlers' pitch with an uneven bounce and some movement off the seam.

To start with Bangar clung on with his fingernails. He played and missed and had some luck when he made contact, but he stuck to it with great guts and his determination never faltered. He grew visibly as his innings progressed. Before long, when the ball was dug in short he stood on his toes and played it down into the ground. When it was shorter still, he ducked or swayed out of the way.

The opener's reactions were excellent and when he had the chance he came on to the front foot and pushed the ball into the gap between mid-on and the bowler or tucked it away behind square on the legside. Then he gained the confidence to lean forward with his weight nicely distributed and pick up ones and twos in front of square on the offside.

His is a homespun, but highly effective technique. He will have been helped by the advice he will have received from the vastly experienced Rahul Dravid at the other end. Even so, there was a time during the afternoon when Alex Tudor bowled a particularly good spell with which Bangar coped more capably than his senior partner. The icing on the cake came with back and front-foot drives through the offside for four off Ashley Giles in the same over after tea.

Bangar's was an innings which will have appealed particularly to aspiring batsmen, those who have had the bad luck to miss out when talent was being dished out but are none the less determined to succeed. He fought magnificently and ended the first day of his sixth Test match a much more experienced, able and battle-hardened cricketer than he was when he woke up in the morning. He must have driven England's bowlers mad.