At the end of the first day’s play, it was clear that the absence of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli was a blessing. In their last, lean years, the anxiety that followed them to the crease, the way their failures sucked the air out of the contest, the mismatch between the reverence commentators rendered up to them and their actual returns did no favours to Indian cricket or, indeed, to them.
Their swagger didn’t make up for their baggage. When Kohli taunted Australian fans earlier this year at the MCG, pulling his pockets out in a sly reference to the sandpaper scandal, the crowd around us erupted. Sitting amongst booing Australians, my son and I laughed at Kohli’s genius for provocation, but it would have been funnier if India hadn’t been at the tail end of a series beating. It was like a great leading man reduced to doing comic turns, like Dilip Kumar playing Mukri. We should be grateful that unlike their admirers, Sharma and Kohli knew it was past time.
I warmed up for the first Test by listening to the Test Match Special podcast. This was a mistake. For Englishmen of a certain vintage, the summer’s cricket during an Ashes year is just prep for the real business later in the year in Oz. Jonathan Agnew was the principal offender but this is a more general affliction. There was a special pleasure, then, in watching India’s top order draw English attention to the matter at hand.
There’s something intimidating about Yashasvi Jaiswal, a shuttered intensity that you don’t see in K.L. Rahul or Shubman Gill. He looks possessed, like Sachin Tendulkar used to, with his eyes seeming to recede into his skull in concentration. I’m puzzled why he doesn’t inspire awe because after twenty Tests, his record marks him out as a modern great in the making. An English commentator referred to the more than seven hundred runs he had made in the five-Test series England played in India, which included two double centuries. I suspect that in Jaiswal’s mind, he’s playing a ten-Test series in two parts; this is the sixth Test and he’s resumed where he left off in India, with a hundred.
If it wasn’t for that unplayable ball from Ben Stokes that came in and straightened, he’d still be there, cramps and all, leaving the ball alone or else cutting and driving it, set fair for his third double against England. The odd thing about his innings was the near-total absence of onside shots. He hit all sixteen fours and a six through the offside. The English seamers seemed to have a plan to tuck him up on the onside and they succeeded in denying him that side of the field but if success means a century in quick time, it’s not clear what constitutes failure. Jaiswal’s discipline in putting away the lofted pull, leaving the angled ball outside the off stump — apart from the odd missed cut — and playing through cramps to get to his century testifies to the awesome combination of self-denial and shot-making that defines this young genius. Every successful team needs a siege engine; India is lucky to have one at the top of its batting order.
Shubman Gill was the perfect foil for Jaiswal. Quite apart from the difference in their back stories — privilege vs privation — the contrast in their batting styles makes for great viewing. Both of them drive and cut beautifully, but there is a suppressed violence to some of Jaiswal’s shot-making that’s absent from Gill’s stroke play. Gill has never played with greater poise and elegance than he did in this innings, though this was partly because England’s bowling wasn’t as consistent and challenging as, say, Australia’s fearsome attack. That said, from the moment he took guard, he motored along at a great rate without ever seeming to be in a hurry.
The strange thing about Gill’s batting is that the impression he conveys is classic, upright elegance, but his stroke play is anything but orthodox. His straight drives and cover drives are gasp-inducing but they are frequently achieved with a very crooked bat. The diagonal bat drive that’s second cousin to a cut is a patented Gill specialty. The short-arm slap that is Gill’s answer to the full-blooded pull is another idiosyncratic variation on textbook shot-making. For someone who hadn’t scored a hundred outside the subcontinent — his only century outside India before this one was made in Bangladesh — Gill looked like he was born to rule the English summer. To score a hundred while debuting as captain, and to do it in very visible black socks, is a proper triumph.
To do it in the company of his vice-captain, Rishabh Pant, who is both the best batsman amongst all the wicket-keeper batsmen in Test cricket and the second-best batsman in the Indian team, must have been particularly satisfying. Pant isn’t just a genuine original, he also serves a secondary function: he helps sort out cricket’s sensible fans from the stupid ones. The latter spend their lives denouncing him to anyone who will listen, for recklessness.
The fact is that Pant’s unpredictable aggression has served India’s cause as often as Cheteshwar Pujara’s monk-like defence. The best moment of the first day’s play was Pant rushing down the wicket the second ball he faced to belt Stokes over his head for four. Stokes laughed, Pant studied the pitch, Gill grinned. Pant was a gymnast; his batting is a form of physical self-expression. There was a short ball that found Pant with his torso at right angles to his legs while his arms went in the other direction trying to hook-paddle the delivery to the backward square leg boundary. Another time, he launched himself at a ball wide outside the off stump and tried to swat-cut it in mid-air. Pant invents hitting positions that other batsmen wouldn’t contemplate, because he can. He is a middle-order genius who can keep wickets. India should count its blessings.
There is something exhilarating about a young team devoid of the deference that pajis and bhais customarily command. It’s greatest member is, of course, Jasprit Bumrah, the finest fast bowler in the world, still a mere thirty-one years old. In a perfect world, he, not Gill, would captain this team, but injury and the need to manage Bumrah’s workload have ruled that out. Still, to have him in prospect, when India take the field, is miraculous, especially to my generation of fans who grew up watching
Syed Abid Ali, Eknath Solkar, even Sunil Gavaskar, take the shine off the new ball.
At some point in the future, perhaps during this series, when Kuldeep Yadav steps in for Ravindra Jadeja, the transition from one cricketing cohort to another will be complete. But for now, after this near-perfect beginning, desis can dream.
mukulkesavan@hotmail.com