A Test match is the mother of all formats of the cricket. Living up to its name, not only does it test a player’s temperament but also his determination and patience to stay on the wicket, to play that extra session, which could work wonders for the team.
India has been a test cricket giant along with other teams like Australia, South Africa, England. Since Nov 2016 Indian team has displayed a mesmerizing level of consistency by maintaining their number one position in test cricket and removing every negative that came in their way.
The transition of captaincy from Ms. Dhoni to Virat Kohli in 2015 when India was in the 7th position in the Test rankings to now when India owns the Test Mace, has been one hell of a ride.
A lot can be attributed to the elite captaincy of Virat Kohli and his aggressive yet effective ways of dealing with criticism.
But what is a captain without his team? If we focus on how India’s test team looks like we can see that there have been a set of players who play all the three formats with consistency in all of them, a major example being Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah.
Then come to those players who play only in the test circuit throughout the year and even play county cricket in the offseason to better their armory with the prime example being the likes of Cheteshwar Pujara and Hanuma Vihari.
The last but not the least are those who have been constantly in and out of the team due to their form, availability, and requirement.
For instance, although Kuldeep and Chahal have done wonders for the Indian team in ODI’s when it comes to testing cricket, Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja have always been given an edge over them especially in overseas series due to more experience and better plan of action in tough situations.
Both Jadeja and Ashwin have been great in-home soil and the figures of Jadeja even expel Ashwin on home soil but overseas the story is different.
Ashwin’s performances outside Asia has been not good. Jadeja also loses its shine in the overseas tour but with improved batting in the last one year or so he beats Ashwin if the team management looks to play alone spinner.
Within these circles of test cricket, the players with the highest amount of pressure on them remain the ones who stick to playing only test cricket.
Some of the prime examples of such players as we said earlier in the modern-day wall of Indian cricket Cheteshwar Pujara. He is a type of batsman who can make the bowler feel helpless by just ducking and leaving the deliveries.
He has often been criticized for his slow and cautious approach in the test format but that has helped his cause. He is unarguably one of the best test batsmen India could have got in the past few years.
In the famous Australia test series win in Australia, he had a wonderful series with three hundred. He even surpassed Kohli with his performances and remain the key player for India through the series.
The latest addition to the Pujara type player in the Indin test circuit is Hanuman Vihari. He also likes to take his time on the pitch, understand the bounce and play accordingly.
One wouldn’t usually see them go after bowlers or get dismissed playing a rather rash shot as they try to refrain from it as far as possible. That is just not their game.
This component of gameplay has born fruit for players like Pujara, especially in overseas conditions. He was dropped in the 2016 season due to lack of form, but then after seeing Virat Kohl’s struggle against the new swinging ball in overseas conditions was when people realized the importance of having a technically sound player like Pujara in the squad.
After the Australia series, even his critics
He came back stronger to score 1170 runs in the 2017 season, that too taking 2 innings less than Steve Smith. These are types of batsmen who would play make pass the sessions of the swinging seaming balls making it easier for the players to come.
He did such tasks for India in many series abroad paving the way for players like Ajinkya Rahane to play freely and go on to score big.
The innings he played in Australia even won him his hard critics who were always after him for playing slow cricket.
In the recently concluded India New Zealand test, where India had to see the face of defeat after a long time Virat Kohli was quoted saying, “Being cautious won’t help us”.
He elaborated by saying that playing the game with a defensive mindset is not gonna help the team and is not at all beneficial for the future.
He added that players took up to ultra-defensive gameplay to adjust to the wicket which is working against India especially in overseas conditions. Direct links to Pujaras innings can be made here as he took 28 deliveries to score the first run of his innings and later got dismissed for 11 from 81 balls.
Somewhere or the other this affected the already set nonstriker’s, Mayank Agarwal’s state of mind and he had to go for the shots to compensate for the lost deliveries to which he later lost his wicket too.
Virat also added that it’s always a smart choice to assess the pitch conditions, but if one starts thinking about it a bit too much and that starts showing on his batting causing him to not focus on it, it can serve as a major blow to the team as well as the player’s confidence. One can sometimes get into too many technical discussions but if the mind is clear, the gameplay and plan of action can be pulled off smoothly was what Virat had to say.
Now, this brings us to the fact that is cautious play hurting India or is it just one bad day at the office for the player out there. Contrasting to this, the world has also seen several legendary naturally attacking players like Virender Sehwag and Brendan Mccullum who chose the aggressive way no matter what format it was.
They knew how to kill the opposition’s back by counterattacking their frontline bowlers. One can never doubt or term their approach to the game as faulty or obsolete.
They were successful in their ways by creating a sense of fear among the bowlers and providing 100% entertainment to the audience as well.
Virender Sehwag holds the record of being the first Indian Test player to score a triple hundred and that too the fastest 300 in the history of Test cricket in just 278 deliveries against a formidable South African side in Chennai.
He was a type of player who would attack every delivery rarely missing out on any. Brendan Mccullum is another player who has a triple century for the Kiwis in the international circuit. His level of fearless cricket can be judged by the fact that with 107 sixes, he holds a World record for most sixes in Tests. He also has the quickest century in test cricket under his name in just 54 deliveries in his farewell test against Australia in 2016.
All of this just proves the fact that cautious play is no parameter to judge a test player. One can be as good a test player by playing aggressive cricket than one who likes to stay in the middle for a while.
Each player has their way to inch towards success. We can’t criticize a player’s approach towards the game unless the technique is at fault. As for the Indian team, technically sound players like Pujara, Pujara is the backbone of the Indian team in test cricket whereas aggressive players like Rohit Sharma, Pant give stability and keep the run rate in check thus ensuring the scoreboard keeps ticking.
The recent success Rohit Sharma had in series against SouthAfrica he makes an exception here. The player who can play long innings with a good strike rate.
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