India v England: Few alarms as emergency Test call answered in style

England's batsman Keaton Jennings bats on the first day of the fourth cricket test match between India and England in Mumbai. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

By the time the opener came to reflect on his achievement in Mumbai, he had already been up for more than 12 hours.

Big-match nerves saw to that, waking him with a start at 5am, and it was only after a second check on his alarm clock that he realised time was still on his side to easily make the 9.30am start to the fourth Test against India.

Jennings’s second anxious moment came when, still without a run to his name off 10 balls, he looped a catch to gully but Karun Nair failed to hold on.

Save for a close call, too, on 10, when he marginally survived an India review for lbw, the South Africa-born opener did not put a foot wrong in a four-and-a-half-hour innings of 112 which underpinned England’s 288-5 after Alastair Cook won the toss.

He eventually fell to Ravi Ashwin (4-75) but had done much to give England the edge by then.

“I woke up at five o’clock, thinking I’d missed the bus, so jumped out of bed, panicked where everything was... then settled myself down when I saw the time.

“It’s been a dream come true, and it’s just surreal that it’s come on debut,” added Jennings, who arrived in India on Monday after being called up from England Lions’ tour of Dubai to replace the injured Haseeb Hameed.

After becoming the 19th England batsman to reach a century in his first Test, Jennings said of his early ‘life’: “I had a little bit of luck, but I suppose that’s the way the game goes sometimes.

Jennings sized up India’s spinners expertly, and completed his hundred with a reverse-sweep for his 12th boundary off Jayant Yadav.

It was a pre-meditated, and very skilful shot.

“I looked at the scoreboard and thought: ‘Well, would I rather get out caught first slip defending or at first slip trying to get to a hundred?’ So I bit the bullet and went for it, and, thankfully, it hit the middle of the bat and went for four.

“In that moment, you don’t really want to jump around, go ballistic – but the emotion, elation, pride, the satisfaction that went over me was really incredible.”