It is indeed a Cold day in ChennaiLiterally – some people came wearing winter hats – and figuratively as well.
India were already ahead by 308 runs. Bangladesh did not see any point in being active participants in this Test anymore. In a strange way, it made sense. The game was deep into declaration territory. Maybe they should save their bowlers for the next match. Or maybe they were worried about the over rate. In any case, under overcast skies, after early morning rain, on a fast bowling pitch (though there was not as much movement as earlier), Mehidy Hasan Miraz bowled twice as many overs as any of his teammates in the morning session of the third day. The spread out field further increased the ease of the batsmen. They were scoring singles.
After a point, Rishabh Pant I can’t take it anymore.”Hey, one will come to Idhar“This is very sad,” he said, urging Bangladesh to bring about change.Brother. One identity. There’s a fielder here. Midwicket.” He has been out of Test cricket for two years. He must have missed it a lot. Enough so, that on the third day of his comeback, he started playing not only for his team but also for the opposition.
Pant’s hundred is never short of highlights and this one was no different. There were plenty of scoop shots, and the crowd used to seeing it over and over again – if you’re a Chennaiite and you’ve seen a great film only once, you need to introspect – really loved it. There was also a straight six that he hit with only his lower arm away from the bat. He had played once in the IPL three years ago, against Chennai Super Kings in Dubai, and Matthew Hayden on commentary dismissed the notion that the ball crossing the boundary was a fluke.
“He’s nowhere near that level. Now if he had both hands on the bat, he wouldn’t have gone half the distance to the boundary. But he actually gets extension through his hands which moves the bat in front of him, and so he gets distance towards the shorter side of the field, that’s true, but what a shot!”
Pant’s scoop has this same paradoxical quality. He is perfectly happy to be in the line of the ball. Other players – Jos Buttler for example – tend to get out of the ball because the biggest thing stopping them from reaching that gap at fine leg is their own body. Pant simply turns his torso away at the last moment and frankly that is more than enough. He has an innate understanding of the mechanics of shot-making and that knowledge appears to be growing.
When he made 39 on the first day of the Chepauk Test, and conditions were pretty tough for batting, Pant did well by playing the ball with very soft hands. It’s easy to forget – because of all the weird stuff he’s been associated with (such as making his name as a babysitter first, then a batsman) – that he has this skill too. At the Gabba in 2021, he was content with just one boundary off his first 48 balls. He had a reason to bat like that. A Test match was on the line. Here, there were no big-picture constraints. He could make 30 off 65 balls because he was playing with aplomb. It’s possible he’s just getting out of his impulse-driven strokeplay phase.
The merriment that followed – Pant made 19 off his first 39 balls against spin, then 64 off his last 48 balls – forced the crowd to stand, and Shubman Gill Stand on your feet. He had to celebrate a lot of boundaries and every time it felt like Pant Insist on a regular routine.two punches of the glove and simultaneously two slaps of the bat. It was like the secret handshake between Troy and Abed from the hit series Community, and looked pretty cool but…
Gill said, “I was telling him not to do this, because I am playing with the same bat with which I played the England series. My bat is actually quite old. And he was hitting my bat so hard that I was telling him that I am trying to save my bat. And if he did not hit the ball in the middle, he would say no let’s do it again. I said, brother, calm down.”
There is a possibility that India have discovered a fun new partnership, one that one of their old players is watching with great interest. Rohit Sharma was sitting in the dressing room, waiting for it. Virat Kohli had a ball in the nets at lunchtime, but decided to take it back. Pant got “it” with an easy push to long-off. He needed just one more run for his century. Gill thought he would settle for that and enjoy the moment. But Pant insisted on taking the second run. Then he moved a little to the side. It must have taken him some time. lots of complex emotionsPerhaps the night of December 30, 2022, must have crossed his mind. Coming back alive from that night is a big deal. Being good enough to play cricket again is a big deal. Scoring a century in your first Test?
Those two or three seconds just before he lifted his bat, when Pant realised the truth of his actions, is perhaps the only known period of time when he has ever looked overwhelmed.