CHENNAI: Shortly after tea on Thursday — the first day of the Ranji Trophy clash between Karnataka and Railways at IC-Guru Nanak College Ground — Mayank Agarwal was the first to enter the nets.
It was no surprise as the India international was dismissed early in the 12th over after which he had to sit and watch Manish Pandey and KV Siddharth toy with the Railways bowlers for four hours.
Apart from the timing of the dismissal with India selector Debashish Mohanty watching, the manner in which he got out would have annoyed him more. Having been hit on the pads by Yuvraj Singh, the entire slip cordon went for an appeal which was turned down within seconds, but Mrunal Devdhar at gully was attentive enough to notice that Mayank was outside the crease and hit the stumps to effect a run-out.
A 38-ball stay in the middle, for 18 runs, through which he was often troubled by pacers Yuvraj and Amit Mishra, ended in an unfortunate dismissal. With Yuvraj was extracting a little extra bounce, Mayank often found himself poking at deliveries outside off-stump without much foot movement. Not that there weren’t cover drives and front foot punches in his three boundaries, but it would be fair to say that he wasn't at his best.
Going into the match, Mayank was coming off a tough South Africa series, where he scored 135 runs at 22.50, with just one fifty. With the Sri Lanka series coming up, he definitely would have wanted to get some game-time.
In the nets during that break, Mayank had all three pacers in the team bowling at him, along with bowling coach Sreenath Aravind. And after every delivery, he was asking the bowler if he was playing close to the body, whether his foot was getting close to the pitch of the ball.
At times when he pushed at deliveries wide of the stumps, he was annoyed with himself. He even took a fresh guard and tried to be as compact as he could.
It continued during lunch break on day two as well, but this time it was head coach Yere Goud and fielding coach Deepak A Chougale, who were giving throwdowns, along with medium-pacers Vidwath Kaverappa and Venkatesh M. It seemed like he was going on the backfoot for deliveries pitching on and around the full-length areas. It even led to him losing his stumps a few times.
In between, he had a long discussion with Chougale as he kept shadow practicing his stride. He looked in good rhythm as the 40-minute break was about to end, but seemed like he wanted to bat a little bit more.
On Saturday, after securing a 55-run lead, Mayank was once again in the middle. This time, he looked different. In the first 20 deliveries he faced, the opener played only at six balls, leaving most of the rest that were outside the off-stump. The ones he played at were nudges and flicks close to the body, a lone cut shot at a short and wide delivery.
As the innings progressed, an extra-cover drive came along, but it wasn’t until Shivam Chaudhary came on that Mayank started playing his shots. He welcomed the off-spinner with a huge six down the ground, but was guarded against Yuvraj at the other end. He finished the day with an unbeaten 39 from 53 balls.
A similar approach continued on Sunday, too, as he reached his fifty in 77 balls. He eventually got out for 56 to an incredible effort by Akshat Pandey at long-off. Pandey took the catch, threw the ball up in the air before going over the boundary line. He then dived back in to complete the dismissal.
What stood out in Mayank's innings was that he did not play anything away from the body and hardly mistimed any shot. It was a display of control and restraint. That he scored 34 runs from 59 balls off pacers Amit and Yuvraj, 14 of them singles, was telling.
Having been picked in the squad for the Tests against Sri Lanka, whether Mayank will be able to translate the control and runs to international cricket is yet to be seen. But, after his disappointing outing on day one, his willingness to quickly address the chinks in his batting and transfer those learnings into a game situation should hold him in good stead when he walks out to open with the new Test captain Rohit Sharma at Mohali.