The fourth day of the Lord’s Test between India and England saw Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara save the Indian innings from collapsing for a low score.
Is the success of Rahane and Pujara good news for India or bad news for India? I think it is bad news for India.
Indian cricket boasts of a surfeit of talent in both batting and bowling. When they had a similar pool of talent, Australia and West Indies dominated world cricket.
Is this Indian team dominating Test cricket today? The results against the Kiwis and the English in their home conditions will give you the answer quite clearly, which is a no.
Why is it so? There are three reasons
Cheteshwar Pujara’s batting
Pujara comes to bat after two fast scoring openers. If the openers succeed, his job is to continue their momentum and not let the opposition get back into the match.
What does Pujara do? He sucks the momentum out with his slow batting and hands over the initiative to the opponents.
If the openers fail, he has no tools to wrest the initiative from the opposition. For example, he spent three sessions on the fourth day at Lord’s, patting back half volleys from the fast bowlers and playing long hops from Moen Ali safely to the point fielder.
Despite sucking up time, when he got out, where did he leave India? India was just 128 runs ahead and still in danger of losing the Test match.
Do you reckon it takes the unique ability that Pujara possesses that only he could have batted to save India at that juncture? An organised batsman like Surya Kumar Yadav could also have saved India, but most importantly, scored way more runs in the time and took the game away from the English.
All that Pujara’s batting these days can do is to delay the inevitable. Why does the team need a slow batting, single skilled player when more dynamic players in the wings can take the initiative and move the team to winning positions?
Cheteshwar Pujara (Photo by Saeed KHAN / AFP via Getty Images)
Ajinkya Rahane’s batting
Ajinkya Rahane’s problem is his inconsistency with the bat over the past few years. He has made it a habit to score some runs only when he is about to get dropped.
Until he gets to the last salon and hurriedly has his drink, India loses Test matches like the WTC finals that he could have batted well and saved.
Why does it have to get to the brink before he makes any meaningful contribution? Despite playing three sessions did he take India to safety? No.
When he got out, India were just 140 runs ahead of England. It clearly shows that occupying the crease is not enough. We need players who score runs freely and put enough distance between the teams. I raise the same question that I raised with Pujara.
What is so special about Ajinkya that only he can bring that specialty to the team? Won’t India better invest in a younger gun that will consistently score faster and help India dominate in this golden age of talent?
India has enough talent in its cricket to unearth few more Rishabh Pants who will bat well at the Test level and also score runs that will put the team in winning positions.
Virat Kohli’s captaincy
Now that Pujara and Rahane have scored runs in the Lord’s Test, the revamp of the Indian middle-order will most likely be delayed for many more months. With Kohli not scoring runs, he will have little moral authority to drop Pujara and Rahane, particularly after this Lord’s performance of the duo.
So, India will continue to play these two veteran cricketers who will prevent India from forging ahead. Added to this decision, Virat also seems not to learn the proper lessons from defeats. India did not lose the WTC finals because they had only three fast bowlers.
They lost because of poor batting in both the innings. The current team composition that carries four pure bowlers and three out of form batters is not the way to forge ahead. India should rather fail playing younger batsmen in its attempt to re-energise the middle order rather than continue to tread water with Pujara and Rahane.
Liam
Guest
Well, certainly not England.
Jeff
Roar Rookie
What is stopping this Indian side from winning? Clearly not England.
Mark
Guest
As it turns out, nothing was stopping India from winning.
Gee
Roar Rookie
A huge stretch to even mention this Indian team with the great Australian & West Indies sides. Two teams who dominated cricket for more than a decade vs a team who isn’t even the best team now shows how optimistic Indian fans really are.
Jeff
Roar Rookie
9.20pm WST :shocked: :shocked:
Jeff
Roar Rookie
Wow. Confident batting from the Indian lower order in that 1st session of day 5. 105 runs. If the top order had the confidence to do that on day 4, they may well have set themselves up for a win - a chance at least.
La grandeur d'Athéna
Roar Rookie
Paddikal, Shaw, Gill, Gaikwad, Jaiswal none of these batters have done anything to replace those who are in discussion. Washi worth a try for long term. Only batter who worth selection is sky, wasting his time in shortest format.
La grandeur d'Athéna
Roar Rookie
Nobel prize for Shami please. Will be disappointed if Jazz is not awarded at least two Olympic gold medal.
Tempo
Roar Rookie
Pujara's career strike rate is 44 which is perfectly acceptable (2.65 rpo). It's only the last two years that his strike rate has dropped to below 30, which is when his average plummeted too. That tells me that he's scoring slowly because he's badly out of form. Previously, once set he could "catch up" and score at a high rate later in the innings. At the moment his defence is okay (hence surviving a decent number of balls per innings) but his scoring options are non-existent.
Tempo
Roar Rookie
Jadeja has also got the most FC triple centuries of any contemporary player (equal with Pujara), and only three other batsmen in history (Bradman, Ponsford and Hammond) have scored more triple centuries than him. So he knows how to make big scores! (He has at least one other double century I'm aware of too).
Rowdy
Roar Rookie
Maybe the ghosts of Bradman / Richardson.
DaveJ
Roar Rookie
Washington Sundar has hardly done a lot at first class level to date that would demand a place. I think the main reason India like most teams hasn’t done well away from home is that there are so few warmup games for people to get into the swing of red ball cricket and foreign conditions. Though they did do badly in Australia last year! And in perspective, India has never had many wins in Australia or England.
badmanners
Roar Rookie
Just answering the headline, in Australia last year they won two tests without the current captain.....
Once Upon a Time on the Roar
Roar Guru
Tsat, an average of even 100 would be useless if the SR was only 20.
Jeff
Roar Rookie
"There’s also no way against that attack on that pitch, a guy who averages 45 in Test cricket should have taken 20 minutes short of 5 hours to make 45 runs at a strike rate of 21." Yes Paul and it's funny reading some of the real-time comments on live blogs at the close of play re Pujara's innings. It was being described as "this is what Test cricket is about" etc. Funnily, if a player comes out and bats for a session then is out for 45, most commentary would be "yeah, good knock". Pujara takes 2 and 1/2 sessions to make the same score and is being lauded as "a batsman who really knows how to knuckle down and deliver a real Test innings when needed". Well no. As you pointed out, what the freak was that bad with the wicket to justify his approach or the plaudits some have been giving him? At best it had a small amount of variable bounce.
Arj
Roar Rookie
When he got hundreds Pujara was very fluent as the innings went on. I remember his knock at Adelaide 2018, the team was in trouble. He started off very slow but by his hundred he was slashing 4s and even hit a couple 6s. Now it seems like he can't get into that second gear, meaning even if he faces 200 balls he'll barely get 60. Considering he's been getting out earlier than that lately, the times Puj faces that many balls he really needs to be cashing in.
Renato CARINI
Roar Rookie
https://www.theroar.com.au/2021/07/31/avoiding-defeat-often-means-avoiding-victory-why-strike-rate-matters/
Jeff
Roar Rookie
Seems to have been out of form for a while. I mean not just this calendar year, but going back two years
Jeff
Roar Rookie
I think SR rate matters. Australia's late 90s-2000s constant winning came, yes from taking 20 wickets and having good bowlers who could do that, but more so by batsmen that scored at a rate that set the pace, dictated the terms of the match and left their captain and their bowlers with the time to take wickets - usually so much time that the opposition team was overwhelmed with the task in front of it and collapsed cheaply. But agreed, slower scoring is forgiven if bigger scores are also coming - and especially if it's only one batsman in your side who is particularly slow.
Tsat
Roar Guru
Strike rate doesn't matter provided the average is high..When Pujara used to score 100s, nobody had any issue..today he averages 25 and scores at 20..that is not acceptable