CRICKET: ENGLAND v INDIA, THIRD TESTENGLAND PROMISED they would not be distracted from their task in the third Test by the riots which have swept the nation – and on day one at Edgbaston they were as good as their word.

Tim Bresnan and Stuart Broad each took four wickets as India were bowled out for 224, after Andrew Strauss won an important toss, and then the captain replied with his first half-century of the summer as he and Alastair Cook put an unbroken 84 on the board.

There was an unwelcome reminder of events elsewhere but still worryingly close at hand even as Strauss went out to toss the coin with his opposite number Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

The 100ft pall of smoke in the near distance turned out to be nothing more sinister than a fire at a disused scrapyard, yet it stood out as an unmissable symbol of violent public disorder – visible to all inside a sell-out Edgbaston.

It certainly did not put off Bresnan, though, and the Yorkshire man spelled out that he and his team-mates have simply put this summer’s unrest out of their minds as they seek to usurp India at the top of the world Test rankings.

“It’s not really affected us,” he said. “We’ve mainly just concentrated on what we’ve got to do, rather than having outside distractions.

“As the situation is at the minute, the authorities have said it’s fine to be able to play and that everyone’s safe.

“We follow their advice wherever we are in the world. There’s no reason why it should be any different over here.”

Bresnan acknowledges it might lighten the public mood if England can wrap up the series 3-0, but insists that is not the way Strauss’ team are thinking in the middle.

“It would be nice to win and give something positive back to England, but I wouldn’t say we are motivated by what’s happening. We’re just going about our business as we would anyway.

“I think that’s the right way to do it. We’ve got a job to do, like anyone else.”