19 March,2023 08:05 AM IST | Mumbai | Sunil Gavaskar
KL Rahul celebrates his 50 against Australia at Wankhede on Friday. Pic/Getty Images
Switching over from one format of the game to another is never easy especially if there is very little time between the change of formats. What certainly helped India when they found themselves in trouble in the first ODI was the fact that in the just concluded Test match at Ahmedabad they had to face a mountain of runs scored by Australia and so had to do some hard grafting to ensure that they too got a big score. In the event, the Indians overhauled the Australian score there and even took a handy lead. So in the first one-dayer in Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium when Starc ripped out their top half when they were chasing a modest score put up by the Aussies, the remaining batters didn't have to change their approach from the Ahmedabad Test that concluded three days earlier and batted in a similar calm patient manner.
Jadeja in particular would have been most keen to ensure that he took the team home after his dismissal in the Ahmedabad Test match. No batter likes to get out however many runs he may have scored but to get out in the manner that he had must have not just disappointed him but also annoyed him since he was batting so well at the time. It was an uncharacteristic shot from a player who has learnt the value of his wicket and makes the opposition bowler earn it. It was Jadeja who gave KL Rahul just the support he needed as they both guided India home.
Rahul's innings was most pleasing as he showed why the team management continues to have so much faith in him. He began with a delectable cover drive for a boundary off the first ball he faced and then hardly put a foot wrong. His body language also was refreshingly positive and gone was the diffidence that sometimes envelopes him in Test match cricket. He also kept wickets well thereby making a strong case to be considered for inclusion in the playing XI for the World Test Championship final.
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The WTC finals will be played at The Oval in England in June where standing up to the stumps will hardly be required and as he showed in the Wankhede Stadium game he would be very good standing behind for the seamers. He will also help strengthen the middle order and allow the team to pick another batter. It is unfair to judge KS Bharat for his 'keeping in the first three Test matches where the ball turned and where even the best of 'keepers would have struggled. What was disappointing was his keeping on the featherbed of a pitch that Ahmedabad provided. I am no expert on wicketkeeping or anything else for that matter, but his hands were nowhere close to the many edges that hit his outstretched pads and stopped the ball from going to the slip fielder. At the highest level catches are dropped even by the best but when the hands are nowhere near the catch, it does indicate a flaw that needs correction. On the batting pitch at The Oval, India can ill afford to give a life to Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne in particular, both of whom must be smarting from their inability to score a hundred in the series.
For far too long the world has been made to believe that scoring hundreds on the fast and bouncy pitches of Australia, South Africa and West Indies was the true indicator of a batter's greatness. Not at all, for on the pitches in these countries all a batter has to do is to struggle for the first dozen overs or so of the hard new ball. Once that is done then these pitches are a batting paradise. In recent years with the Kookaburra ball, that loses its shine and hardness of leather and seam in a few overs, being used in these countries scoring a century is no big deal. Yes, it can be a test of a batter's courage because of the speed and bounce, but it's not a test of his technique and temperament that the spinning pitches of India challenge. Scoring hundreds in India is passing the real examination of a batter's skillset and mindset. That's why Steve Smith is a great batter having scored one of the greatest hundreds seen in India in Pune on a pitch that turned from Day One. He also got another hundred in that series in 2017, plus another near hundred. Labuschagne will have to make another trip to India four years later and try and get a couple of tons after which he will definitely be ranked among the greatest batters in the world.
India will look to wrap up the ODI series to give itself the confidence as the World Cup approaches later in the year. If Bumrah can be fit for that then India have a good chance of continuing the trend that they themselves started in 2011 and Australia in 2015 and England in 2019 continued of the host country winning the much coveted trophy.
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