100 up for Pujara

Cheteshwar Pujara, once described as the ultimate warrior by Ravi Shastri has reached the milestone of 100 Test matches. Only 13 cricketers from India and 73 globally have reached that milestone. That now is an elite list.

Cheteshwar Pujara is the exact opposite (antithesis) of a modern-day cricketer: Bats time, plays dots, doesn’t hit sixes, has no full-time PR agency to pap him wherever he goes, doesn’t even have a single tattoo, has no social media fan army to make reels and shorts, doesn’t have a zillion followers on social media and he doesn’t bombard the relatively small number of followers with endorsements, isn’t the fastest between wickets, doesn’t post pictures of his upper body on Instagram, doesn’t own the best dancing shoes. Borrowing words from Harsha Bhogle, the list of things he is not good at is much longer than the list of things he is good at.

I am a child of the new millennium. I was 7 when India won the T20 World Cup, and 8 when the IPL started. There is very little logic in me going mad over a Test match player. Watching a T20 match is a more convenient option as compared to watching a Test match today. All of us are running out of time. 24 hours is just too short for doing all that we want to in this fast-paced 21st century. Then putting in 7-8 hours on a Test match for 4-5 days in a row is the last on anyone’s priority list.

Despite all of this, I absolutely love Cheteshwar Pujara. When Cummins and Hazlewood kept battering him on the body at the Gabba, I winced in pain too. When he raised his bat in Dhaka to reach a test century after 1443 days, I too felt a sense of relief.

Some cricket fans feel that Kohli anchoring T20 innings is good but the same fans will criticize Pujara for playing slowly in a Test match. “Hypocrisy ki bhi seema hoti hain…..” It is things like this that make me believe that they are not fans of the sport but fans of a particular player. All fan bases have some vile fans which don’t define the fan base on the whole. I have no personal problem with Virat Kohli. He as the Test captain had lobbied for getting A contracts to BCCI’s top Test cricketers. This helped the likes of Pujara increase their financial remuneration for playing 5-day games. But it is the short-sighted attitude of a small section of fans that pisses me off. That is the difference between me and Pujara. He would hardly care what someone else thinks of his style. He plays the way he knows best.

Pujara’s game is based on the sheer amount of work ethic he puts in. While researching for this blog I saw a video of Aakash Chopra where he mentions how during their KKR days Pujara would go to the disco floor to improve his footwork! Another very interesting video of Pujara is from 5 months ago where he is playing for Sussex in the England. Two footballers from the Premier League side of Brighton and Hove Albion join Pujara for a fun cricket nets session. Pujara standing outside the nets guides the footballers perfectly on how to bat. I thought it was mind-blowing. One of the footballers even mentioned at the end: “He’s gonna be a great coach”

Pujara is a single-format player. He doesn’t play in the IPL. India does not play a truckload of tests every year either. It is difficult to remain in touch for a purely Test player. Pujara himself said that post-Covid he did not even play one First class game before the great Australia tour. Despite this constraint, he played 928 balls throughout the series. Many people complained about his low strike, but R. Ashwin summed it up beautifully:

I have seen a lot of criticism that Puji doesn’t move the game forward and that there is no scoreboard pressure on the bowlers when he gets out, and how that contributes to the dismissal of the new batters. By the same token, those critics should attribute hundreds made by other batters to Puji when he plays out the new ball and leaves behind tired bowlers.

R. Ashwin in his tribute to Pujara playing 100 Tests
Best friends Pujara and Ashwin have had similar journeys where they have played almost every game like their last. (Picture Courtesy: BCCI)

Pujara now has entered a club that includes the likes of Tendulkar, Dravid, Gavaskar, and Kapil Dev among others. There is no shadow of a doubt when it comes to classifying these cricketers as legends, not just of Indian cricket, but of world cricket. But, there are raised eyebrows if one classifies Pujara even as an Indian great.

Pujara has been asked to open the innings when India has had an opener less. He made most of those opportunities. On a green top in Colombo, Pujara carried the bat to make 145 runs while making a comeback into the playing XI. But the same Pujara was dropped when India had three openers and one of them had to be accommodated out of position. This was in England in 2018. That’s pretty much use and throw attitude.

Hopefully, now fans will understand the enormous value Pujara has brought to the Indian test setup. If that is not the case, history will surely be kinder to him. If that too doesn’t happen, I’ll always be kind to Pujara. This has been my 3rd post on Pujara. He now is my most blogged cricketer. Ashwin and Kohli are joint second at 2 each. It is safe to say, I am obsessed with this guy. I hope I can meet him someday and thank him for Adelaide, Bengaluru, Gabba, Colombo, Ranchi, Lord’s, Oval, Melbourne, Sydney, and Johannesburg. But above all of this, thanks for being a selfless team man!

Siddhesh.

All-format players

The sparkling form of Suryakumar Yadav has led to the demand to include the batter in India’s test side. The demand was echoed by former coach Ravi Shastri who said Surya could do well at No. 5 in the whites.

There is also a school of thought that Surya is going through the best phase of his career and India should get the most out of it by playing him across all formats. Some people say that India wasted Surya’s talent for a few years, so we compensate now by giving him every chance. Some feel the guy has scored 5000 First Class runs and has done enough to merit a place in the side.

I actually don’t buy into any of these theories. Through this blog, I’ll try to explain my point of view.

In my opinion, there are only a few players who have excelled across formats for India. I’ll stick to contemporary modern-day players. Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja, and Rohit Sharma to a certain extent. I actually can’t think of any other player who has done well at the same time across the three formats. There are many players who have played all three formats and excelled in them, but not simultaneously for a considerable period of time. The reason is probably simple: each format has its own demands.

KL Rahul was at the peak of his powers in Test cricket during 2016-17. He scored over 1100 runs at an average of 53.27 in the 2 year period. He did have a good run in the IPL with RCB. But that was batting lower down the order which wasn’t his natural position. His peak IPL performance came in 2018 opening the batting for Kings XI scoring 659 runs at a strike rate of 158.41.

2018-20 was quite a good run for Rahul in T20Is. He scored over 1000 runs at a SR north of 140. However, 2018 was the beginning of the slide for Rahul in the longest format. In 15 Tests, the opener could only make 22.23 runs per innings. It reached a low as he was dropped from the team after the Perth test. He was replaced by his best friend Mayank Agrawal for the last two Test matches in Australia.

PERTH, AUSTRALIA – DECEMBER 15: Lokesh Rahul of India is bowled by Josh Hazlewood of Australia during day two of the second match in the Test series between Australia and India at Perth Stadium on December 15, 2018 in Perth, Australia. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

The story for Mayank is also quite similar to KL Rahul. Mayank started his international career on the back of some incredible domestic performances where he knocked the door down for selectors to pick him. At one point he scored over 1000 runs in a month. The Karnataka opener put on memorable performances in the last two Tests against Australia scoring 195 runs in 3 innings where he took a special liking to Nathan Lyon and hit the off-spinner for a few sixes. Mayank made 597 runs in 6 innings against South Africa and Bangladesh scoring a double hundred against both the sides. It seemed that India had found a perfect Test match opening batter.

Mayank then changed his batting style for excelling in limited overs cricket. He developed a much higher backlift. To his credit he did find success in the IPL with that style. He made 400+ runs at a strike rate of 156 as an opener for Punjab. But the changed style led to regression for Agrawal in the whites. He put in dismal performaces against Australia in the first two Test matches, only to be dropped in the 3rd Test. He made his debut 2 years back in the 3rd Test at the MCG. Now, he was dropped in the 3rd Test after India’s magical win at the MCG in the 2nd Test. Life came a full circle for him.

Mayank from 2018 and 2020 looks a different batter altogether

2 years on, Mayank is not a starter for India in any format. A player who once seemed destined to play 100 Test matches has played only 21. He was recently stripped of the Punjab Kings captaincy. You gotta feel bad for the guy.

However, it is unfair to ask a player to stick to one format and specialise. Every player will want to be the best across all formats. Even Cheteshwar Pujara has spoken that he still has white-ball aspirations. But, it is a call for selectors and coaches to make. So is Surya so valuable to India in white-ball cricket that we don’t consider him for Test matches. This is taking in consideration the fact that we are not short of batters in the longest format. It is not as if we don’t have people scoring runs in First class cricket. Sarfaraz Khan has had a fabulous season. Hanuma Vihari has proved his mettle on occasions. Priyank Panchal and Abhimanyu Easwaran have done well for India A. Shreyas Iyer has done everything to cement the No. 5 spot despite his short ball troubles.

Rishabh Pant has done wonders in Test cricket. It was this performance in high pressure games that has kept him in India’s white-ball teams. The southpaw’s underperformance was seen more in T20Is where he has played 56 innings at an average of 22 with a paltry SR of 126. For a sustainable white-ball career, Pant needs to revamp his T20 game. He has shown improvement in the ODI format, but the shortest format still is his achilles’ heel. India shouldn’t be hesitant to bring in other players in T20s. Sanju Samson, Rahul Tripathi, Rajat Patidar have done more than enough to merit a place.

Sanju Samson in the IPL (Courtesy Deepak Malik / Sportzpics for IPL )

With more and more cricket being played by the day, format specialization will happen in the long run. However, can the selectors pick specific players for specific formats and get the best outcome for the side. This will hasten the process of specialization. This however is easier said than done. Most tours are a combination of Tests, ODIs and T20s. If it is a shorter tour then 3 ODIs and 3 T20Is are packed into 13 days as is the case with the ongoing Indian tour of New Zealand. Hence, picking a similar squad for 2 formats makes logistics much more simpler.

But a more nuanced approach to scheduling where short tours are limited to one format can help in specialisation of not only players but also coaches. Take for instance the ongoing New Zealand tour. Rahul Dravid has taken a break and VVS Laxman has taken over the coaching role. At the same time there have been calls to bring in format specific coaches especially for T20 cricket. But if tours have two formats then taking two coaches will be tough logistically.

England are now earning rich dividends for selecting players on the basis of formats. Jos Buttler is no more a Test cricketer. But he is a T20 World Cup winning captain.

Out of all the cricket playing countries, if there is one nation which can smoothly become format-specific it is India. We do not have a dearth of players and resources. If specialisation doesn’t happen today, it will happen tomorrow. Like it or not like it. It is just how cricket is evolving. England have already gone down that road and succeeded. It is high time India catches the bus for which it is already late.

Stats taken from Cricbuzz, Espncricinfo, cricindeed, HowStat.

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What Kohli means to me?

I haven’t written anything in a long while. This break has coincided with not being able to follow cricket as closely as I would like. This reached a crescendo when I preferred calling up a friend instead of being invested in an India-Pakistan game during the recently concluded Asia Cup. However, by the end of the Asia Cup something changed. India was playing a dead rubber against Afghanistan. Kohli was batting in the 50s when I saw the score. In my head, I hoped he gets the much-awaited hundred as there still was enough time for him to accelerate further. I didn’t let go of the mobile till he reached the century-mark. As soon as he hit a six and reached his 71st hundred, I let out a roar. As loud as I could. My neighbours heard that. I was off Social Media during that period. But I wanted to tell the world how happy I was. So I actually ended up taking my mother’s mobile phone to post a Whatsapp status of Virat raising his bat after the hundred. These events actually made me wonder as to what was it with Virat that I felt so energetic?

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Virat was a different beast all together when it came to captaining in Test cricket. For the last 5-6 years, promotional campaigns for Test series have been filled with Kohli’s celebrations after a wicket or a century.

Kohli has understandably been a favourite of the Australian media. The broadcasters were unhappy when it was announced that Kohli would be on paternity leave and not play 3 Test matches as they feared drop in viewership levels.

He has been the unrivalled brand ambassador of the longest format of the game. He himself seems to prefer the 5-day format over the other two. When asked by journalist Rajdeep Sardesai about his future, Kohli was candid in saying that he wants to play 150 Test matches for India. He led India to 40 test match wins, the highest for an Indian captain. MS Dhoni stands a distant second at 27 wins. Critics will talk about the spin friendly pitches which made India a home-track bully. But there are so many Test matches abroad which India has won under Kohli.

The Lord’s test match (2021) is one of my favourite Kohli captaincy moments. Shami and Bumrah are smashing England bowlers by belting the ball to all parts. Kohli in his animated style is cheering the Indian duo from the balcony. The two put on an unbeaten stand of 89 runs. The Indian team led by Kohli welcomed the two into the pavilion by cheering for them in the long room at Lord’s which essentially is English territory in the supposed Home of Cricket. All of this a day after 15th of August, in a year when India surpassed UK to become the 5th largest economy in the world. Talk about shedding colonial inhibitions, be it cricket or economy.

Kohli declared giving the English 60 overs to survive. His message to the bowlers was pretty clear.

“For 60 overs, they should feel hell out there”

Virat Kohli during the huddle speech in the 2021 Lord’s win

India won that Test match despite the pitch offering so little for the bowlers and the limited time. Kohli’s aggressive style on the field was in a way a reflection of an India rising on the global stage and asserting its opinion in a fierce way. During the Lord’s test, The English crowd were hurling bottle corks near KL Rahul. Kohli in a gesture asked Rahul to throw them back. He quite literally asked Rahul to give it back. This was reflective of the Kohli one saw during the 2014-15 tour of Australia. “I have no reason to respect him if he doesn’t respect me”, Kohli made no secrets about his relationship with Mitchell Johnson.

His role as a protector of his teammates was something I always loved. When James Anderson was having a go at Bumrah, it was Kohli who gave Anderson some truth bombs while batting against the former. He even ended up taking digs at Anderson’s old age. Now one can question the ethics of this behaviour. To be very frank, even I have questioned Kohli’s antics in the past. But then you got to admire a person who puts himself in the firing line for his mates. That’s an essential quality of a leader.

Social media has its very own image of Kohli: mostly brash, egoistic and a self-centered sigma male. But he also is a very selfless leader. He once gave up business class seats on an airplane for the fast bowlers so that they can get extra leg room for their tired bodies.

In a recent T20I game, Kohli batting on 49* was seen gesturing to Dinesh Karthik to go for a six and not take a single to help the former get to a half-century. In stark contrast, he played second fiddle to Devdutt Paddikal in an IPL game as the southpaw from Karnataka notched up a century. Not wanting to get to a milestone himself, but wanting a youngster to get to one. This mature side to Virat has been heartening to see.

The former Indian captain has had a huge effect on me personally. When I was 11-12 years old, I always would wonder why did people slightly elder than me would be so connected to Sachin Tendulkar. This in spite of the fact that Tendulkar was well past his peak and prolonged his career for a bit too much. It was probably the first time that I experienced a generation gap. I could never experience the similar connection with Tendulkar even when he retired. I sat as normally as I could as people shed tears for the master after his final innings in Mumbai in 2013. However, the tide had changed when it came to cricketers of my era bowing out or going through a tough time.

When MS Dhoni called it a day on his international career, I left my dinner midway and slept without touching the unfinished plate. Similar feelings ensued when Virat left India’s captaincy. The stepping down from Test leadership hurt most. After all, I had grown up with India being a dominant force in Test cricket not just challenging opponents but winning in different conditions. Virat had transformed India’s Test team. I don’t see Rohit being as good a Test captain as Virat. I would love to be proven wrong. But Rohit just seems to fit in with regard to Limited overs cricket a lot better than the 5-day game. Few years back i thought Rohit Sharma can never be a good enough Test batter. Look at where he is now. A top opener who has excelled in the tough English conditions against the moving Dukes ball. Prove me wrong yet again Rohit!

It has been delightful to see Kohli’s resurgence as a T20 batter in the last 2 months. India needs him to fire yet again in the other two formats. Who wouldn’t want to see those dominant Test match knocks and the ODI run chase mastery that we were so used to.

So what does Kohli mean to me? Much more than the number of runs, centuries and victories. It is the drive to perform and be the best every single time that stands out. The desire to put in 120% in his own words. He is not my favourite cricketer. I love Dravid and Ashwin far too much. But there is something. Something explicable. It’s lovely and I want to treasure it!

Langer and Paine saved Australia, but couldn’t save themselves

Justin Langer’s resignation as Head Coach of Australia closed an amazing chapter of Australian cricket. 4 years ago, Australian cricket was in shambles. Scenes from that fateful day in Newlands, South Africa rocked the Australian sporting psyche.

The teary-eyed press conferences after the Sandpaper gate were pretty depressing to watch for me (Imagine the stress for the people involved)

In the last 4 months, a lot has happened in Australian cricket. It is like a fast-moving news day. Loss to Bangladesh. World T20 win. Tim Paine’s scandal. Pat Cummins’ crowning as Test Captain. Ashes routing of England. Langer’s resignation. It’s like a sinusoidal curve. Constantly up and down. A similar tumult was seen in India where the power centre has shifted away from Virat Kohli.

When the sandpaper gate hit Australia, it seemed like it was the darkest day in the history of Australian cricket. Malcolm Turnbull, the then Prime Minister of Australia delivered a passionate monologue admonishing the ‘cheating‘ involved.

The captain of Australia is regarded as the 2nd most important person in their country. And when Steve Smith admitted to cheating, it must have shattered the Australian public. What followed the saga wasn’t a great thing either. Steve Smith and David Warner were banned for 12 months leaving Australia leaderless. The incumbent coach, Darren Lehmann had also resigned from his position. It was in this time that Tim Paine was joined by Justin Langer to “restore the pride of Australian cricket.” Langer explicitly mentioned to the players that he had all the time and space for banter, but none of it for abuse. Australia went to England, lost all the 6 games badly. England once even ended up scoring 481 in an ODI rewriting record books. They lost a home Test series against India, the first time India won a Test series in Australia. Apart from the Test series win against Sri Lanka, there was nothing to celebrate for the Island nation. They kept focusing on the process as the outside world kept thrashing them.

Last year when Tim Paine sledged Ashwin using inappropriate words, all of us Indians (including me) had a go at him (and rightly so). The next day, Paine fronted the press and put out a public apology. “I want to apologise for the way I went about things yesterday… my leadership wasn’t good enough, I let the pressure of the game get to me.” Many Indian captains have yelled abuses at opponents. But none of them has ever come ahead and apologised for it like Paine did. That’s what defines his legacy for me. Yes, people will remember you for hundreds, catches, wickets. But none of the records will matter if you can’t set the right example for the people watching the game. Tim Paine surely has fewer runs and dismissals than many great wicketkeepers. But he was a great leader who restored lost pride. A lot of keepers will score more runs and take more catches than him. But, no one will be able to manage and lead such a broken side to success. No one could have done what he did as a leader.

Australia was always my second favourite team growing up. Brett Lee, Mike Hussey, Shane Watson, Michael Clarke fascinated me as a young boy. I even used to copy Lee’s celebrations.

Pretty cool – The iconic Brett Lee jump (© Espncricinfo)

Immediately after the sandpaper gate, I felt betrayed and disappointed. I had lost all the affection I had for Australia. But, now some of that affection has come back. And it is due to Langer and Paine.

Everyone serves for a limited duration. No one is indispensable. Langer and Paine may have passed their expiry date. But everyone who goes out deserves to go out with respect and pride. And sadly Cricket Australia have shown 0 respect for the two of them. The optics of the resignations of the duo haven’t been great. That is what disappoints and hurts me. The duo’s tenure shouldn’t be remembered for their disgraceful exits but the successful campaigns they helmed.

I love Pat Cummins and I hope he takes the Test team forward and gives us all reasons to love Australia more and more.

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See you until next time.

2021 – The last time AB de Villiers played Cricket

AB de Villiers will never come back to play cricket again and it hurts

As we sit down just an hour away from 2022, there are multiple cricketing events and trends of 2021 that pass my mind. I am confused about which one shall I choose for the final blog of 2021.

Rohit Sharma: The Test match opener; India’s horror run at the 2021 World T20; LORD Thakur; India’s middle-order logjam are some which come to mind from the Indian perspective. COVID and cricket; teams abandoning Pakistan and then Pakistan’s amazing run at the World T20; England’s abysmal start to the Ashes hit me from the global angle.

But there is one thing that happened for the last time in 2021 and will never happen again in the future. AB de Villiers will never step onto a cricket field again. I don’t even want to say that he will never hold a bat again. Because batting was just one of the so many things he could do on a cricket field. Leave aside his extraordinary batting skills, he was one of the best wicketkeepers, one of the best fielders and add to that some pretty helpful medium-pace bowling. He wasn’t just born to bat, he was born to play.

Embed from Getty Images

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.“

This was Harsha Bhogle referring to de Villiers on Cricbuzz with Conservation

Who needs to be a South African to appreciate what AB de Villiers is. He truly unified the sport. After all, cricket is no war. We will have our national teams, but there is a life beyond that.

What stood out with de Villiers for me was his ability to play the situation. He wasn’t one of those people who keep advocating about playing your natural game and batting with intent every time. When South Africa needed him to bat time, he could score 33 off 220 balls without a single boundary as he and his childhood mate Faf du Plessis saved a Test match at Adelaide. He can come into an ODI to bat in the 39th over and score 149 runs off 44 balls en route to the fastest ODI hundred in the history of the game. There will be cricketers who will save test matches from tougher situations and some will even score faster hundreds. But there probably will be no one who will do both of them with that class. That’s what AB de Villiers is: GENIUS!

Best friends at work, together! (Photo: Getty Images)

AB shocked the world with his international retirement in 2018. But, the retirement from all other forms of the game was on the cards. It is not as if he was out of touch. He was still hitting the ball to all corners in this IPL. Time away from a young family, quarantine and bubble life took its toll. Cricket’s never gonna be the same without this man.

I’ll leave you with my favourite picture of the South African legend or like Virat Kohli says: “the best player of our times”

AB de Villiers chilling at the boundary with a ball boy during an IPL match in Bengaluru. Man, I wish I was the ball boy (any one of the two)

From South Africa, but loved all around the world: Abraham Benjamin de Villiers. Thanks for all the memories ❤️

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System breakdown in Indian Cricket

Clearly, the ongoing saga in Indian cricket has left a bad taste. It has enough potential to damage a team that will play a Test match in 5 days in South Africa.

Allegations. Counter allegations. Clarifications. BCCI. Virat Kohli. Rohit Sharma. Sourav Ganguly. Selection Committee. It’s all messed up. And what’s worse, it’s out in the public domain. You can have differences of opinion over multiple issues. But you should have the ability to sit down and resolve them as grown-up adults. Instead of leaking snippets of information to various news outlets, the BCCI should have sat down with its two seniormost players over a coffee or tea and had a peaceful transition of leadership. Sadly, this is not the first time it is happening in Indian cricket. And, it probably won’t be the last time either.

In 2020, Rohit Sharma played the last 3 matches of the IPL, in spite of having a hamstring injury. Ganguly, BCCI President, Ravi Shastri, then Head Coach kept giving interviews suggesting Rohit shouldn’t play. Didn’t they have the courage to pick up their phone and call Rohit instead of this 3-way communication through media? Or maybe they did and couldn’t stop him from playing. But, Rohit Sharma is a BCCI contracted player under the A+ category. Surely, he can’t play without BCCI’s approval. This delayed his recovery and knocked him out of the 3ODIs, 3T20Is and the first 2 Test matches against Australia. “It’s been very confusing and there’s been a lot of uncertainty … around the situation,” Kohli said before the tour on Sharma’s situation. The loser, in the end, was Indian cricket.

Let me roll the clock back to 2017. The Anil Kumble – Virat Kohli saga was played out in the public. It could have so easily been avoided. If things weren’t working out, you should have broken up peacefully. Kumble should have been asked to put in his papers with the utmost dignity and life could’ve moved on with peace. But the disrespect shown to both Kohli and Kumble made for shambolic viewing.

Dharamshala: File—- Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli along with team coach Anil Kumble during a practice session in Dharamshala on Friday. Kumble has decided to step down as head coach of the Indian cricket team. PTI Photo (PTI6_20_2017_000210B)

It seems that the BCCI officials are at a huge fault. Because they are the ones leaking all the news as sources. Absolutely, they are. If a cricketing board lets go of their ODI captain with just one line in a press release (which is about the Test team), they surely are at fault. Look, Neither am I a VIRATian baying for Ganguly’s blood nor I ever was a fan of Virat’s white-ball captaincy. But, a person who has led your team for more than 4 years deserves better communication. This headline from the Indian Express sums up my feelings.

“ABSENCE OF GRACE: Controversy over Kohli’s exit as ODI captain is less about the decision itself, more about the way it was made and communicated”

But, it’s not all about the BCCI. The players have had their share of issues with communication.

After the WTC final, Kohli said “The mindset has to be to score runs and find ways to score runs. You can’t be too worried about getting out.” This was a clear reference to Pujara’s Strike rate. Less than 2 months later, before the beginning of the Test Series against England Kohli said, criticism of Pujara’s Strike rate is unfair. I wouldn’t have had a problem if Kohli would have dropped Pujara for the England series. Because the Indian No. 3 hadn’t scored a Test 100 for 2.5 years (Now almost 3). But Virat flipped and how. Own up to what you said.

Rohit Sharma was abysmal while handling his hamstring injury last year. He kept saying everything is fine (When everything clearly wasn’t). His adventure cost India an opener for a large part of the Australian tour.

Let’s talk cricket now. I earlier said that I was not a huge fan of Virat’s white-ball captaincy. The major reason for that is his inability to have at least 6 bowling options in a game. Now that is not entirely Virat’s fault. 10 years back, Sachin, Sehwag, Yuvraj rolled over their arm for 2-3 overs. Now all the batsmen are so much oriented with other things (gym and fitness) that part-time bowling in the nets is an art of the days gone by. That makes it hard for a modern-day leader to have more bowling options. But, even when the option has been presented in front of him, he has rejected it in crunch games. Take the 2019 World Cup. Kedar Jadhav was dropped during the fag end of the tournament. Vijay Shankar was injured midway, leaving Hardik Pandya to bowl 10 overs in all the remaining games.

Kedar Jadhav and his slingy bowling action (Source: India Today)

Kohli picks limited-overs sides on the Test match formula. No batting depth. No bowling cushion. While that formula has worked well for India in test matches as their primary bowlers (Ashwin, Jadeja can bat pretty well), it will never translate into limited-overs cricket as Chahal and Bumrah are bonafide Number 11s. Never mind Bumrah’s runs in England. That was England losing the plot by bowling bouncers.

Rohit on the other hand likes playing with options. At MI, he has 6 if not 7 bowling options to choose from. More like MS Dhoni, the master of white-ball captaincy. Look at this year’s CSK team. Everyone from 1 to 10 could bat and had 6 bowling options. That’s how good white-ball teams are these days. Look at England. Plunkett (until 2019), Woakes, Archer, Rashid, Willey almost all of their bowlers can bat. Two gun all-rounders in Stokes and Moeen Ali. Root bowls a bit of off-spin.

India will never be able to achieve that template. But, it should have an extra bowler and more batting depth. Rohit Sharma has got a big task in front of him. Going by his track record, he seems to be up for it.

Splitting ODI and T20I captaincy was always going to breed confusion. Virat for one T20 WC. Rohit for the next, Then Virat again for the ODI WC in 2023. Giving at least 2 ICC events continuously to Rohit is only fair.

Rohit is a blessed leader. No one is better placed to lead India right now than him. As for Virat, let’s just hope he gets his batting form back. India needs that more right now. With all due respect to Sourav Ganguly and all that he has done for Indian cricket, he shouldn’t be focused on giving interviews at least for now. Arrange a Zoom call, if you already haven’t. Get Rohit, Virat, Dravid, Selectors. If you don’t like Zoom’s interface, use MS Teams or Webex. And if you don’t want to see each other’s faces, use Discord or just say you have a network issue and switch off your video. But please do it. And clear the air inside, because there seems to be a lot of indoor pollution right now.

Make this happen, @Sourav Ganguly albeit virtually. (Source: TOI)

Ajinkya Rahane should be dropped.

Yes, batting at No. 5 is hard in India as the ball gets soft. Yes, Rahane scores tough runs. Yes, Rahane is an inspirational leader. Yes, Rahane is a selfless team man. Yes, Rahane is a humble grounded person. Yes, Rahane is a wonderful slip fielder. Yes, Rahane led India wonderfully in Australia. There are so many things to like about Ajinkya Rahane.

But if you average 32.73 in your last 50 Test matches, you have had your share of opportunities. For some time now, Virat Kohli’s deputy in the longest format has been struggling for runs. But the team management has backed him consistently. Rahane has essentially been Indian cricket’s crisis man for some time now. The most recent of Rahane’s backs to the wall performance have been the 61 at Lords’ and 67 at Chennai this year.

Lord's Test: Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara help India take 154-run lead vs England on Day 4 - Sports News
Pujara-Rahane bailed India out of trouble at Lords, 2021 (©Reuters)

But those two innings have been Rahane’s only 50s in 2021, a year where he has played 21 innings. Rahane’s average reached 50 in the middle of 2016. But now it has plummeted below 40. His is the worst average for a pure batter to have played 75+ Test matches for India. That is not a record one would like to have.

Rahane’s career average has plummeted to all-time low of 39.30 (Figures indicative of the final Test played by Rahane in the concerned year)

With Shreyas Iyer delivering a pathbreaking performance on debut and Kohli set to return for the next Test, it seems like Rahane will lose his spot. Very rarely is a Captain dropped from the 11. One instance that comes to my mind is George Bailey at the 2015 World Cup who made way for Michael Clarke. Clarke had recovered from his persistent hamstring niggles. Bailey led Australia in the 1st game against England. And then made way for Clarke as Australia became world champions for the 5th time.

What has led to added pressure on Rahane is the consistent dip in form of Pujara and Kohli over the past 2 years. all 3 of them have had the worst phase of their individual careers at the same time. India’s middle-order engine room has dried up. This has been offset by the openers, Rishabh Pant, Ravindra Jadeja, and some lower-order contributions like Shami and Bumrah at Lords’.

This is not a rant against Rahane. He has been one of my favourite players for a long time. Let us not forget, less than a year ago he scored one of the finest centuries ever by an Indian player in Test cricket, in the aftermath of the disastrous 36 all out.

He is a quality player. A bit of time away from the Playing XI will only help him regroup and refresh. When the time is right, he will slot back in right away. In an era of so much cricket, somebody will inevitably get injured, be rested or lose form. It won’t be long till he gets back into the team.

What might help Rahane is just giving up on the want to play white-ball cricket and focus on Test cricket. He should probably play county cricket during the IPL season. I know it is easier said than done to leave the money of the IPL to play in oblivion of the English winters. But that will help Rahane more. He anyways did not feature in the Starting XI of his franchise for the last two seasons other than coming in as an injury replacement and a substitute fielder.

Meanwhile, Shreyas Iyer has taken to Test Cricket like a fish to water. Hopefully, he remains in the side for the next test and for the forthcoming South Africa tour which is doubtful because of the emerging Omicron variant. Batting overseas will be a different challenge altogether but Iyer has shown that he is capable of big things at the highest level. What sets him apart is his First Class (FC) experience of 54 games. It is not easy playing FC cricket for Mumbai. He didn’t only play. He bossed the Ranji Trophy circuit. 8 months back, the world seemed to have turned against Iyer. He had a career-threatening shoulder injury.

Shreyas Iyer spoke with indiatoday.in about his current status and how hard it was for him to deal with the setback post surgery after he dislocated his shoulder in March and has
Iyer had to undergo surgery and rehabilitation for recovering from his shoulder dislocation (©AFP)

He lost his established No. 4 position from the ODI team. He lost the captaincy of his IPL team. Both of them to Rishabh Pant. He couldn’t make it to the World Cup squad of 15 as his Mumbai teammate Suryakumar Yadav rose through the ranks of Indian cricket. But out of nowhere, Iyer was picked for the Test side. A late injury to KL Rahul meant Shubman Gill would have to open the batting and a slot opened up for Iyer in the middle-order. How well did he make it count!

A similar situation beckons Rahane now. Instead of an injury, he is facing a massive dip in form. But like we saw with Iyer, time changes quickly, or rather flies.

Ravichandran Ashwin is a gift India should treasure

There is so much one can admire about R Ashwin. 400 Test wickets. 150 ODI wickets. World Cup winner. Champions Trophy winner (where he bowled the crucial final over). 5 Test hundreds. Gutsy fighting innings at Sydney to draw a Test match. 2 IPL titles. The list goes on. But, that’s not how most people remember him. You say Ashwin and people remember the run-out of Jos Buttler. It’s a pity. Here’s a cricketer who has possibly won India more Test matches than anybody else in the past 10 years. He is a bonafide matchwinner.

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The Final ball bowled by Ashwin to England’s James Tredwell in the CT Final, 2013

As a Test match fanatic, no cricketer has given me more joy than Ashwin. Since he started bowling with the white Indian jersey he has got wickets for fun. Before the Australian summer of 2020-21, Nathan Lyon had 390 wickets. Ashwin had 365. 7 months later, Ashwin has 413. Lyon is stuck at 399. Ashwin has obviously played 4 Test matches more than Lyon, but nobody with a sane mind would’ve thought Ashwin will get to 400 faster than Lyon. In that period the offie from Tamil Nadu also notched up a memorable Test century at his home ground in Chennai. Lyon is a great bowler in his own right. He had a below-par series against India. Gill, Pujara ,and Pant made sure he had a tough time. A cancelled Test series against South Africa didn’t help his cause.

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For more than a month before the 9th of September, Ashwin’s life seemed miserable. He was left out of the Playing XI in all the 4 Test matches of the Pataudi Trophy. Many were baffled and shocked. I will be honest, I was annoyed to hell.

But something just changed on the 9th of September. Ashwin made a comeback to India’s T20 team after more than 4 years. That too for the T20 World Cup. I was pleasantly shocked. After an injury to Washington Sundar, Ashwin had a very strong case. But it still came as a surprise. Most people, including me didn’t expect Kohli to pick Ashwin in the T20 side. But better sense prevailed. In the four years when Ashwin was out of the white-ball setup, Ashwin had strong IPL years and innovated his limited-overs craft. He started bowling leg spin. He led an IPL side for 2 years with a 6-8 Win-Loss record for both years finishing in the bottom half of the table on both occasions. I hope he gets into the Playing XI and makes a massive impact in the World Cup.

Ravichandran Ashwin of Delhi Capitals celebrates the wicket of Rohit Sharma captain of Mumbai Indians during the qualifier 1 match of season 13 of the Dream 11 Indian Premier League (IPL) between the Mumbai Indians and the Delhi Capitals held at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on the 5th November 2020. Photo by: Saikat Das / Sportzpics for BCCI

For years, Ashwin was chastised about being a bully only on Indian pitches. His overseas record was always brought up to denigrate him. A lot of it must’ve been justified. But do you see similar phrases used for James Anderson or Stuart Broad both of whom have similar records in and outside England. Nobody judges the performances of fast bowlers like Rabada, Cummins when they tour India. It is only Ashwin who is judged by his performance overseas. Ricky Ponting averages only 26 in India in the long format. Does that ever come in hindrance of the fact that he is one of the greatest to grace the game of cricket? No, it doesn’t. Rightly so. But, the same yardstick should apply to everybody. There is no point calling James Anderson a GREAT, if you don’t use the same phrase for Ashwin as well.

Both are greats who take their game to the next level in favourable conditions

Ashwin started brilliantly in England and Australia in 2018-19. But injuries let him down at the wrong time. Jadeja came in and delivered some wonderful performances at the Oval (2018) and Melbourne (2018). It was during this period that Ashwin lost his batting flow and wasn’t even the shade of the batsman who got 2 Test centuries on the tour to the West Indies (2016). This made India choose Jadeja as the all-rounder ahead of Ashwin. But 2 years on in December 2020, events seemed to conspire Ashwin’s way. Jadeja pulled his hamstring in a T20I. This enabled India to pick Ashwin as the lone spinner for the Pink ball Test at Adelaide. Ashwin delivered.

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Ashwin knocked over Steve Smith thrice in 3 Test matches on the tour

The pink ball game ended in a nightmare for India. India was bowled out for 36 and they lost Virat Kohli and Mohammed Shami for the rest of the tour. But, Ashwin had found his groove with the ball. He had match figures of 5-71 getting key wickets of Smith and Labuschagne. The Boxing day Test at Melbourne was a continuation of that for Ashwin. He knocked over Smith and Labuschagne again bowling India to victory in tandem with Jasprit Bumrah on the backs of an inspired batting performance from Ajinkya Rahane. At Sydney, a lost part of Ashwin was found again. He found his groove with the bat. Batting with a tweaked back along with Hanuma Vihari who had a torn hamstring, Ashwin bailed India out of trouble to a memorable draw at the SCG.

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The unimaginable heist of Sydney, 2021

Playing with injuries, wasn’t new for Ashwin though. He bowled a majority of his 52 overs at Adelaide (2018) with a Grade III abdomen tear. He bowled India to a famous victory then. His injury meant he was sidelined for the rest of the series. That opened up the door for Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav, both of whom grabbed the opportunity. Yadav was so highly talked about that Ravi Shastri called him India’s first choice spinner overseas. The chinaman had played just 6 Test matches till then. 33 months since that comment, Kuldeep has added only 1 Test match to his playing career. The India coach clearly got it wrong.

As Ashwin turns 35, I hope he plays on and on for India. The spin bowling cupboard of India, at least in the red ball format seems dry at the moment. Whoever comes in will have a massive hole to fill. Even two players combined would be proud of 413 Test wickets and 5 Test Hundreds. Who knows how many more wickets and runs Ashwin has in the bag. Hence, India needs to treasure Ravichandran Ashwin. He is a modern day legend. One of India’s finest, if not the finest.

Happy Birthday, Ashwin!

End of the road for Saha?

R. Ashwin in his Instagram series ‘Reminisce with Ash’ was discussing the 2017 Bengaluru Test against Australia along with Cheteshwar Pujara. Ashwin kept asking Pujara several things about the game, but to no avail. Pujara hardly recalled anything. He vividly remembered one incident though: the diving catch Wriddhiman Saha took to dismiss Matthew Wade in the 4th innings.

India’s wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha, center, leaps in the air to catch the ball to dismiss Australia’s Matthew Wade during the fourth day of their second test cricket match in Bangalore, India, Tuesday, March 7, 2017. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Let me put things in perspective about how good the catch was. Ashwin was bowling to Wade (a left-hander) without a Short-leg. A ball found the inside edge of Wade’s bat and ballooned off his pad to the vacant short leg region (which lies to Saha’s wrong side as the ball was spinning away from the left-hander before taking the edge). But, Saha lept and completed what was a catch for the ages. Add to this the intensity of an India-Australia Test series, where India lost the 1st test at Pune by 333 runs. The scrutiny on the Indian team was so high that Anil Kumble (then Coach of the team) took the team on a trek to Garudmachi in the Sinhgad ranges as a team bonding activity.

In the first innings, Saha had taken a similar catch to dismiss Steve Smith off Jadeja’s bowling. This one was easier though. This Test match wasn’t the first and the last game where Saha showed his class with the gloves. In October 2019, he was making a comeback into Test cricket after a break of 22 months because of a series of thumb and shoulder injuries. Virat Kohli had then called Saha as the best wicketkeeper in the world. During the same home season, Umesh Yadav had said that he owed Saha a ‘treat’ because of his two diving catches off the former’s bowling.

In the 22 months that Saha was out, Rishabh Pant made more than most of his opportunities. The swashbuckling southpaw became the first (and only) Indian wicketkeeper to score Test match centuries in England and Australia. After those exploits, it was widely believed that Saha would be the keeper in home conditions and Pant would get the nod in overseas conditions. MSK Prasad, the former chairman of selectors has also confirmed this on record. “Look, our committee was clear that Rishabh Pant will be our first choice keeper in places like England and Australia. Only when we are looking at matches in India where you don’t need batting after number six most times, you can have a specialist keeper,” Prasad said while speaking to PTI.

The team also stuck to this idea until the pre-pandemic tour of New Zealand in 2020, where Saha had to warm the bench as Pant had a poor outing scoring 60 runs in 4 innings. This de facto arrangement was breached as India handed the gloves to Saha in the Pink-ball test at Adelaide. Scores of 9 and 4 in the Test was all that Saha could muster. He even dropped a difficult catch of Mitchell Starc. Saha hasn’t donned the Indian whites since then apart from the Sydney Test where he came on as a substitute keeper when Pant injured his arm while batting.

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Saha drops a very difficult catch in the Day-night Test at Adelaide. He failed to meet the high standards he has set for himself with the gloves.

15 months after the comeback, Saha finds himself out of Test XI. The team has decided to hand the gloves to Rishabh Pant in the home Test series against England. The management has decided to go with the package that Pant offers with the bat against the pure wicketkeeping option that Saha gives. Pant’s two impact innings in Sydney and Brisbane against Australia helped his case. The general belief is that ‘Pant can’t keep and Saha can’t bat’, but that is far from the truth. Both are underrated in their respective skills. Saha is no mug with the bat. He has 3 Test hundreds, one of them batting at No. 8. In fact, for a long time, Saha batted below Jadeja and/or Ashwin. He has batted at 8 fourteen times. India’s tail isn’t the best one in the world either. They are many times a team of 2-3 No. 11s. You put Pant at 8, and even he will find it tough to score runs at that position.

The management can’t be blamed for this though. Whenever Saha batted down the order, it was initially because of Ashwin prowess with the bat (4 Test centuries till 2016) and later on with Jadeja’s improved batting (averaging 55.57 with the bat in the last 3 years). But, Saha has surely been underutilized with the bat. Pant has gotten more opportunities to bat higher up the order and has done well in them.

Pant is also a decent wicketkeeper. Not a great one, but he gets the job done more often than not. He holds the Indian record for most dismissals by a wicketkeeper in a Test series as he notched up 20 dismissals on his first visit to Australia in 2018-19.

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On a green wicket at Gros Islet in 2016, Ashwin and Saha notched up Test centuries against West Indies to take India past 350 after being 126-5.

After a few years, Pant can make a case for himself as a pure batsman and let a specialist do the wicketkeeping job. Kumar Sangakkara and Alec Stewart are two examples of how letting go of the wicketkeeping gloves propelled their performance with the batting gloves to another level.

Stats © Cricket Country

As of now, that seems the only way Saha can get back to the Playing XI. But till that time (if it happens), we need to accept the fact that Pant is no Saha to take every catch that comes to him. He will drop a few, but he will learn things the hard way.

But in the interests of the Test team going forward, it might not be a bad option to try out Pant as a pure batsman. Not only will that reduce his workload, but might also thrust him with more responsibility while batting. He would convert those breath-taking 90s into mature Daddy hundreds in that case.

Cheteshwar Pujara: 6000 Test runs without a Social media fan army

It was the second last over before the lunch interval on the final day of the now historic Gabba Test between India and Australia. Pujara was pinned on the body for the umpteenth time by Pat Cummins. At the same time, I was chatting with a friend about the game. He was quick to pounce on Pujara’s numbers at that time,“88 balls 8 runs, kaye re” (Translated to what is 8 runs from 88 balls). I did try to convince him about how well Cummins and Hazlewood were bowling, but it didn’t quite work out. To accentuate my crisis of defending Pujara’s strike rate, Shubman Gill at the other end smashed Mitch Starc for a six in the final over before lunch. But my friend wasn’t the only one to demand intent from Pujara. Many legends of the game including Ricky Ponting and VVS Laxman believed that Pujara should show some more intent.

Gill was playing on 64(117) and Pujara at a miserly 8 from 90 balls. A similar situation prevailed in the previous Test match. At Lunch on Day 5 at Sydney, Rishabh Pant was batting on 73 of 97 balls and Pujara on 41 from 147 balls. It becomes very easy for people to say that if the person at the other end is playing their strokes, then why not Pujara. But, I don’t buy into that argument. I never will.

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Pant congratulates Pujara after the latter completed his slowest fifty in Test cricket on Day 5 at the Gabba, Brisbane.

In an era of slam-bang T20 cricket, when everybody goes hell for leather from Ball One, being a Pujara is an open invitation to criticism. He does not even have a fan army like Kohli and Rohit have to defend and celebrate him on social media. But he hardly cares. He does not care how he looks, how he scores his runs, how much time he takes to score those runs. He has no ego. He does not care if the legends of the game think he is batting slow. All he cares for is his wicket and he hardly throws it away.

The aftermath of the Australia series has been different though. Everyone has been full of praises for Pujara who took 11 body blows on the final day of the Border-Gavaskar series 2020-21. Adjectives like The Warrior and The Rock have been used for the Indian No. 3.

Cheteshwar Pujara: the immovable force. THE ROCK.

But all the praises would have easily turned to scathing criticism had India lost or drawn the game. It has been the template of Pujara’s decade long career in international cricket. Somehow, in a team of 6-7 batsmen, he is singled out in failures. He was dropped for the Sydney Test in 2015 after India had already lost the series 2-0. In 2018, Pujara was dropped for the 1st test against England as India accommodated 3 openers in the lineup. Pujara, though in his unassuming style showed his mettle with the heroics of Australia in 2018-19, where he played 1258 balls to score 500+ runs as he batted for 31 hours in the 4-match series helping India to their 1st Test series victory down under. After such a contribution, I believed the constant chit-chat about intent and strike rate will die down, but it hasn’t.

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Pujara’s last Test 100, a 193 run innings came in Sydney in 2019.

India had an embarrassing show in New Zealand in 2020 (pre-pandemic) when they lost the Test series 2-0 in a shambolic fashion. Pujara had scored 11 runs 81 balls in the 2nd innings of the first Test. India lost the game by 10 wickets and guess what, Virat Kohli came out in a press conference saying the Indian batting lacked intent. In the next game, Pujara showed some unnecessary intent as he got out playing a very unlike Pujara stroke to throw his wicket after having made a very good 54.

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Trent Boult celebrates as he bowls Pujara in the second essay of the 1st Test

In the 1st innings of the 3rd Test at Sydney in the recent series, he crawled his way to a 50 of 176 balls as the rest of the batting group crumbled around him. He was blamed for the dismissals of his partners. It didn’t hit me hard as a Pujara fan this time. Because now it seems, Pujara will always be on the edge. He will probably never be sure of his selection. He might be going into every Test innings thinking it may well be his last.

After Virat Kohli went on paternity leave, Pujara was given the Vice-captaincy role. In the 3rd Test, as Rohit Sharma came back into the team, Rohit replaced Pujara as the deputy to Ajinkya Rahane. Rohit Sharma has been brilliant for India in the long format off late. But has he contributed enough as a Test player to get the leadership role? In my opinion, not at all. Rohit has played 34 Test matches, Pujara 81 and Ashwin 74. Pujara and Ashwin deserved the position more than Rohit. Rohit wasn’t even sure shot pick as a test opener until the home season when he was made a Test opener. But then my opinion doesn’t matter.

Ashwin and Pujara pose for photograph. Both have been India’s biggest matchwinners in the Test format for a decade now. (Photo Courtesy: BCCI)

At the Gabba on the Final day, it was because Pujara was holding one end up that Shubman Gill and Rishabh Pant were able to bat the way they did. On that day, Pujara acted like the premium to India’s insurance policy of going for a win. If Gill and Pant had failed in their quest for runs, India had Pujara to hold one end up and take India safely to a draw. The same was applicable in Sydney where Pujara made 77 in the 4th innings as Pant’s 97 gave India hopes of an unlikely win.

He turns 33 today. He hasn’t made a test century for the past 2 years now. Since the 2018-19 Australia series triumph, he has scored 685 runs in 13 Test matches. He averages a below-par 31 in that period. It is a scar he will look to erase. A big score is in the offing. With 4 test matches against England at home, he will surely look forward to getting to the 3 figure mark.

After a heroic tour of Australia in 2018-19, runs have dried up for Pujara.

He might be the last batsman of his style that Test cricket will see. He doesn’t need to chastised and butchered for being who he is. He needs to be celebrated like every modern-day cricketer or even more. He is differently-abled and not disabled.

Happy Birthday Cheteshwar Pujara. I don’t care about the world, I will always celebrate you because 6000 runs and 18 Test centuries take some doing.