RANCHI: When Shubman Gill took guard against Shoaib Bashir in the 60th over, he had faced 119 balls for 39 runs without a single boundary. It’s what the situation demanded. He just batted time. But it wasn’t easy. Even as he was watching from the non-striker’s end, Rohit Sharma was out caught behind.
Before long, all three of Ravindra Jadeja, Rajat Patidar and Sarfaraz Khan had followed the captain. At 120/5, the remaining 72 would have seemed like 172 for Gill. The surface was playing tricks and both Shoaib Bashir and Tom Hartley were bowling in tandem.
In Dhruv Jurel, Gill found a companion. The No. 3, wearing a cap, going about his task one ball at a time. With every appeal, you could see the tension among the fans in the stands. Barbados 1997? Chennai 1999? Galle 2015? Even Hyderabad from a few weeks ago? The flashbacks of past heartbreaks would have flashed by.
Little did they know they were going to witness something similar to Adelaide 2003. They defended, worked the ball with a vertical bat — the lack of bounce meant across-the-line shots were difficult — and used their feet to get to the pitch of the ball more often than not. To put some context into this passage of play, India didn’t have a boundary (off the bat) between overs 16 and 46.5. They did not even so much as attempt to hit one. In this 30.5 overs, India’s score went from 82/0 to 146/5.
Jurel was the first to break the shackles when Bashir went around the wicket. The Indian accepted the full and wide delivery with glee. It was the only boundary off the bat between overs 16 and 59.
If Jurel continued from where he left in the first innings, comfortably working around spinners, Gill’s first sign of intent came in the 54th over. A full delivery from Bashir was drilled down the ground forcefully, but Ben Duckett cut it off. He continued to bat the same way even after his 50. Only when the target came below 20 did Gill decided to free his arms. In the first ball of the 60th, he put his front foot down and tonked Bashir into the sight screen. Two balls later, another heave over cow corner. It didn’t matter that Ben Stokes had boundary riders on the leg-side. The winning runs was a double on the leg side; it was fitting as it embodied the kind of partnership and fight the two youngsters had put together. The celebrations were again reminiscent of Adelaide 2003 and it wasn’t just because coach Rahul Dravid embraced Gill. Having expressed his interest to bat at No. 3, Gill has had a tough time in that position until the hundred in Visakhapatnam. Since then, his scores read 0, 91 and 38. If ever there was a time for him to step up, this was going to be it. Later, he posted a picture with the caption indicating that Dravid told the same to him “If not you, then who. If not now, then when? — Rahul Dravid,” it read. It was not just Gill though. Sarfaraz in Rajkot, Yashasvi Jaiswal through the series and Jurel in Ranchi have all risen to the occasion, showing that the future of Indian Test cricket is in good hands.
Rohit agreed.
“Lot of these guys are quite young and you’ll see these guys playing in the coming 5-10 years regularly in this format for sure,” he said in the post-match press conference. “The way they have come and took responsibility, scored a lot of runs, big runs and with the ball as well some of these guys were quite impressive.”
As for the series win, it was achieved without Virat Kohli, Rishabh Pant and Mohammed Shami (all four games), KL Rahul (injured for three games), Jasprit Bumrah (rested for this Test), Jadeja (injured for one Test), R Ashwin (absent for half an innings) and Mohammed Siraj (rested for one Test),
“You try and find your way when you’re pushed against the wall, and I thought in Rajkot, when we were behind the game a little bit, we found a way to come back and get a lead of [126], and then, even Hyderabad, I thought, having a lead of 190 there and then coming down to chase 230, we felt that it wasn’t a wicket where you could be rolled over for 100 or 110 like that. We just were not brave enough in that game. We fell short by around 20-25 runs there, but again, certainly, we knew before the series started that it is going to be a challenging series, and England is going to play slightly different cricket than the rest of the teams who have come here, and to be honest, they have found some success as well, in playing that way, but I thought we were quite composed in what we wanted to do as a batting unit, as a bowling unit,” Rohit said.
Years down the line, if someone goes and checks the scoreline, it will read 3-1 after Ranchi. That will never tell the tale of how Rohit and Co constantly found a way to bounce back. In the process, they have continued the legacy of India’s home dominance.