Murali Vijay,the stylish right handed opening batsmen from Tamil Nadu seems as somebody who has immense powers of concentration, a cool head and almost all the strokes in the cricketing guide.
His presence at the wicket is reminiscent that of a monk: calm, cool ad collected. But this was not the perception which we had of him, say a couple of years ago.
Then, he looked a wonderfully stylish player, a class apart from the rest. The ease of his stroke play made him stand out from the crowd, which surely still does.
However, he was far too inconsistent and that hunger to bat for long hours and score big, which we witness today, was somehow missing.
Vijay made his debut for India in 2008 against Australia at Nagpur, where he was a replacement for Gautam Gambhir.
His call to the national team was on the back of some wonderful domestic performances, especially the 462-run opening stand with Abhinav Mukund. He did reasonably well in his first outing as an international player, scoring 33 and 41 in the first and second innings respectively. But Gambhir came back and opportunities for Vijay were spread far in between.
Vijay became a crucial part in the Chennai Super Kings set-up in the IPL. He scored big in crucial IPL games but those Twenty20 performances caught up on his real game which was to spend long hours on the wicket and score big. For four years after his debut, he scored only two first class centuries – exactly the same number of which he had scored in the T-20s.
He got his first chance as an opener for the entire series in 2011 against the West Indies but he did not perform well.It seemed that he was far too casual in his approach and the selectors started to look elsewhere as well; giving Mukund an opportunity and even trying out Dravid as the make-shift opener.
Abhinav Mukund did not fare well either and Dravid had retired from international cricket, which gave Vijay another go as the opener in the 2012-13 home series against Australia. He latched upon this opportunity with both hands and did exceedingly well, scoring 430 runs at an average of 61.42 and was India’s leading run scorer in the series. Vijay scored two back-to-back 150s, which spoke volumes about his levels of concentration and willingness to bat for long hours and score big runs.
In that series Vijay showed that he could leave the ball and wait for the poor deliveries – and that he could do that for long hours.
India then went onto tours of South Africa, New Zealand, England and Australia and a real challenge was on the cards. Vijay batted superbly in English conditions, and his innings of 165 at Trentbridge and a match-winning 95 at Lord’s meant that Vijay was steadily beginning to cement his place in the playing XI.
He was India’s top run getter there too, when big names struggled to get runs, amassing a total of 402 runs in the five Test matches at an average of 40.20 runs per innings.
In the 2014-15 tour of Australia, Vijay came into his own. He consistently batted for long periods and scored 408 runs in the four Test matches. He was instrumental in underpinning India’s strong batting performances. The 144 on the Gabba wicket was a testament of Vijay’s newfound confidence, he had found a different zone for himself where he could play the second fiddle and just bat the way he wants.
Surely, Vijay has seen it all in his 31-match Test career and the fact that he averages over 40 having played 20 of those outside Asia says that he has done pretty well as India’s opener. He has so far scored six international centuries, out of which five have been over 150, which shows that once he gets in, he aims for a big score.
The rise of Murali Vijay has been stupendous. He is somebody who will never get as many accolades as Virat Kohli does, but his role nonetheless is as important as him and much of India’s top order’s success depends on how he performs.
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