A Test match that seemed certain to end up a draw now carries way more jeopardy thanks to the India captain
Alagappan Muthu30-Sep-20242:35
Manjrekar: ‘This is the legacy Rohit Sharma will leave as captain’
Test cricket has been around for so long that there are some things that simply can’t be known. Did Bradman sleep with his bat by his bedside? Did WG floss his teeth after brushing? Did Imran take a class on the psychology of cornered tigers? Did the Nawab of Pataudi have morning breath?The importance of a batter hitting the first two balls he faces for six sits somewhere in there, as a quirk. History, in as much as it could, suggests there have been four people to do so.Foffie Williams is known, even though it happened way back in 1948, because he was a fast bowler and it was very out of character. The rest of these marauders are of a more recent vintage and therefore data about them is much more readily available. Sachin Tendulkar took a liking to Nathan Lyon in 2013 and Umesh Yadav couldn’t resist George Linde in 2019. Each of these was an attack in the spur of the moment.On Monday, Rohit Sharma sashaying down the pitch to launch Khaled Ahmed straight down the ground and then swivelling on his back foot to pummel the next ball over square leg was deliberate.Related
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“I don’t think as a bowling unit they [Bangladesh] expected that to happen. But it was always part of our game plan was to see, okay, how can we push this game forward? And how can we get the result?” bowling coach Morne Morkel said.India need five wins to feel safe about their place in the World Test Championship final next year. They have five Tests at home. Wrapping them up before heading to Australia would be a huge load off their shoulders. But the weather in Kanpur and the drainage at Green Park have been less than accommodating of those ideas. If India had dreamed of going Down Under and playing the Border-Gavaskar series all freed-up, they needed to do something drastic.And they did. Even before they began batting. With Rohit once more the instigator.Litton Das was playing some glorious punches either side of the wicket all while taking zero risks. So India’s captain pulled two of his slips out and planted them right in front of the batter. One at short midwicket, the other at silly mid-off. Now Litton couldn’t get his runs playing those check drives where his hands never strayed too far from his body. Now he had to do something different. He had to open himself up to risks.The one he took was trying to clear mid-off. And Rohit was there. He leapt up in the air. Reached one hand up into the sky and came down with the ball and a smile that needed way more space than he had available, a shortcoming fixed quickly enough when his team-mates joined him. His smile spread to them and their smiles spread to the 20,000 or so people who were watching at the stadium. Shubman Gill re-enacted the catch in the celebrations. Rohit re-enacted it himself when he returned to mid-on for the new batter. It was a moment’s fun that he allowed himself before getting back down to business.Bangladesh could scarcely have imagined the carnage heading their way. Most of it came off the bat of Yashasvi Jaiswal, who looked certain to become India’s fastest Test centurion. At various times, he had six times as many boundary riders (6) as catching fielders (1). And still he kept beating them, choosing often enough to go clean over their heads, but the more impressive shots were the ones along the ground. He somehow kept finding the gap, the sweep going finer of deep square leg, the cover drive scuttling away to the sweeper’s left, long-on staring as the ball thudded into the stands behind him.Rohit Sharma came out all guns blazing•BCCIThere was a moment when Shakib Al Hasan, fed up with what’s happening, tried to get his captain’s attention to suggest a field change but Najmul Hossain Shanto must have had too much on his mind to notice. In the end, Shakib just gave up and was forced to wait until the end of the over to convey his message.With Bangladesh scrambling, Jaiswal helped himself to 72 runs off 51 balls. Virat Kohli produced an innings where his control percentage was down in the mid-60s but his strike rate was up in the high 130s thanks to a willingness to try shots as exotic as the standing reverse dab to deep third. KL Rahul forgot to look like he’s going through an existential crisis every time he plays this format and scored a 33-ball fifty. India took the lead within three hours.”It was a collective buy-in from the batting group and that is important,” Morkel said. “From GG’s point of view as well, we decided let’s see if we can take the game forward as fast as possible and you need a leader from the front to do that. And Rohit has done it so many times for India and again today to go first ball, bang six, you know, on a surface where you think, is the bounce might be up and down, you’re not quite sure how the new ball is going to play, just to make his mark in that fashion…”India got to 50 in 18 balls, 100 in 61 balls, 200 in 148 balls and 250 in 183 balls. Each of them was a Test match record and a plan coming together. The vastness of our game (so much of it being unknown) and the weirdness of this one (so much of it lost to the wayside) collided when Rohit took strike.
