Positive start boosted England's confidence: Joe Root

England batsman Joe Root, who scored his third century against India on Wednesday, said the positive start on the opening day of the first cricket Test match against India gave the visitors a lot of confidence.

Excellent batting by Joe Root and Moen Ali helped England to score 311/4 in their first innings on the opening day at the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium here.

Coming together after England lost three wickets in the first session, Root and Moeen Ali added 107 runs between them to help the visitors to dominate the first day.

"It was good to take advantage of what was a pretty good pitch today and might change over the course of five days. It was important to start well. It's something that going forward will give us a lot of confidence and hopefully will give the rest of the guys around us confidence as well," Root told reporters here.

"We were pretty comfortable against the spinners and that should be a really good thing for us going forward," he added.

Commenting about his batting, Root who scored 124 runs, said: "I just tried to work on my defence and make sure that was as solid as it could be."

"More than anything (I tried to) not change my approach but just being better at it and I practised really hard in Mumbai and on the first couple of days leading up to this game."

"I did the hard yards and was confident to go out and play my natural game. It was really pleasing to see all my hard work coming good today," he added.

--IANS

gau/sam/vt