England chases down 371 runs to beat India in series opener at Headingley

LEEDS, England (AP) — England brilliantly paced a mammoth chase of 371 runs to beat India by five wickets and take the series-opening Headingley test on Tuesday with 14 overs to spare.

England pulled off the 10th highest successful run chase in test history by playing clinically and confidently on a fifth-day pitch and in conditions, especially in the morning and afternoon, that suited India's bowlers.

Ben Duckett's and Zak Crawley's magnificent opening partnership of 188 — knocking off more than half of the required runs — underpinned a chase that was ultimately finished in style by Jamie Smith's massive knee-down six over long-on.

After a wicketless morning, pacers Prasidh Krishna and Shardul Thakur were India's surprising wicket-takers in the afternoon. When spinner Ravindra Jadeja claimed captain Ben Stokes after tea with 69 runs needed, the chase finally became tense.

But Joe Root, 53 not out, and Smith, 44 not out, removed all drama by hitting the remaining runs without giving India a sniff.

The odds were heavily against England when it resumed the chase on a gloomy morning on 21-0, needing 350 more runs. But England strengthened its reputation for gunning down big targets. It achieved its 12th successful run chase in 14 chances at home under coach Brendon ‘Baz’ McCullum.

In a big year for England with four more home tests against India followed by the Ashes in Australia, England said it was prioritizing winning over entertainment. And this wasn't a typical “Bazball” crash-bang chase, but grown up “Bazball,” measured and controlled. The asking run rate was just under four an over and England stayed around it.

“What a mint test match,” Stokes told the BBC. “To get to day five and come home with the win is amazing and what a game to be a part of. A great start to the series.

“We did what we needed to do in the crucial moments. This win here is not down to just the skill, but the attitude of this dressing room.”

It still entertained all five days, only the third test in history in which all four innings were 350 runs or more. England scored 465 and 373-5 against India’s 471 and 364.

England became the first team in first-class cricket, let alone tests, to concede five centuries in a game and win.

“A brilliant test, we had our chances,” India captain Shubman Gill said. “Dropped catches (and the) lower (batting) order not contributing cost us.”

Duckett and Crawley calmly absorbed India pressure to take the total to 117-0 by lunch and become the first set of England openers to score 2,000 runs as a pair since Alastair Cook and Andrew Strauss 13 years ago.

Crawley was happy to let Duckett be the aggressor, and hit his slowest test 50. He was lucky on 42 when Jasprit Bumrah missed a low caught-and-bowled chance. No. 1 test bowler Bumrah hurled 16 overs without a wicket on Tuesday.

“Zak played beautifully and we knew we had to set the tone up,” Duckett told the BBC. “We only had to look at the scoreboard to know that if we batted the overs, we would win the game. There were moments when I thought about stepping into another gear but the breaks in the game helped us to stay calm.”

After lunch, Duckett was dropped on 97 by a diving Yashasvi Jaiswal, angering bowler Mohammed Siraj. That was Jaiswal's third drop of the match.

Duckett reverse-swept Jadeja for his 14th boundary and his hundred off 121 balls. He jumped and punched the air to celebrate his sixth test hundred and second against India.

But he lost his partner Crawley after a brief rain delay on 65 off 126 balls. The pair achieved the fifth-highest opening stand in the fourth innings in test history, and dropped the odds in England's favor.

Krishna, who had been going for six an over, was the unlikely wicket-taker. Then he got a second 11 minutes later, Ollie Pope on 8.

Duckett was almost scoring at will. When he reverse-swept Jadeja for a six, India wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant acknowledged its daring by tapping Duckett's arm.

But he finally fell to a catch in the covers on 149 off 170 balls, including 21 boundaries. Next ball, the barely used Thakur got Harry Brook to nick off for a duck.

England still needed 118 runs and India sensed a chance, but in the middle already was Root, who averages 58 against India.

He and Stokes added 49 together, helped along by India misfields and three poor India reviews. Stokes was out for 33 but Smith came in and hit the winning runs after Root cruised to his 102nd 50-plus score in his 154th test.

AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket

England's Zak Crawley plays a shot on day five of the first cricket test match between England and India at Headingley in Leeds, England, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)

England's Ben Duckett plays a shot on day five of the first cricket test match between England and India at Headingley in Leeds, England, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)

England's Joe Root, right, and batting partner Jamie Smith celebrate after their win on day five of the first cricket test match against India at Headingley in Leeds, England, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)

England's Jamie Smith, right, and batting partner Joe Root celebrate after their win on day five of the first cricket test match against India at Headingley in Leeds, England, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)

England's Zak Crawley, right, celebrates after scoring fifty runs on day five of the first cricket test match between England and India at Headingley in Leeds, England, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)

England's Zak Crawley plays a shot on day five of the first cricket test match between England and India at Headingley in Leeds, England, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)

England's Ben Duckett celebrates after scoring a century on day five of the first cricket test match between England and India at Headingley in Leeds, England, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)

England's Ben Duckett celebrates after scoring a century on day five of the first cricket test match between England and India at Headingley in Leeds, England, Tuesday, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)