India vs England: Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Shreyas Iyer yet to learn the art of defensive batting in Tests

Two defeats at home in less than a year with no win in between. One on an Indore rank turner against Australia where they collapsed batting first, and another one here against England as they succumbed in the fourth innings. And in between two sensational collapses in South Africa. For a team that has one of the best technicians the game has seen as head coach in Rahul Dravid, India’s lack of application with the bat across conditions is unbecoming of a side that was ranked No.1 for the major part of the last decade.

While the conditions they encountered in South Africa were challenging for batsmen, even at home there is one common factor in their struggles. After Steve O’Keefe, Ajaz Patel, and Matthew Kuhnemann, Sunday saw debutant Tom Hartley – another left-arm spinner with limited skill set – run all over them.

Having moved on from the likes of Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane and even Hanuma Vihari, batsmen who play old-fashioned Test cricket, there was a reason India wanted the likes of Shubman Gill, Yashavi Jaiswal and Shreyas Iyer in their ranks. The three batsmen are naturally aggressive, and India believe their pragmatic approach will help them overcome challenging conditions, which have been the norm worldwide after the World Test Championship came into play. On result-oriented pitches, where Tests seldom go to Day 5, making quick runs has merit.

A fifer 🖐 on debut

Tom hardly put a foot wrong as he brings the visitors to the brink of victory 🎉#INDvsENG #IDFCFirstBankTestSeries #JioCinemaSports #BazBowled pic.twitter.com/toBszaZ8yM

— JioCinema (@JioCinema) January 28, 2024

However, despite the young batsmen living up to their promise in white-ball cricket, the same cannot be said in Tests. Of course, there have been a few promising knocks, but truth be told, it has been a while since any new batsman has stood out in terms of his consistent performance in Test cricket. It means, at least in Tests, India are still relying heavily on Virat Kohli, who unlike the rest in the first innings, wouldn’t have thrown away his start by holing out in the deep or by going for an aggressive shot. While there is merit in India preferring attack-minded batsmen in Tests, the inability to find a balance between hitting aggressive shots and playing defensively to ride through a storm is strikingly missing. It is the reason why they even had to go back to Pujara and Rahane after they were discarded for the first time. But having moved on from both, India are struggling to click as a batting unit.

“To be fair, there have been challenging wickets as well,” Dravid said of the batting unit’s struggles. “We have been playing on pretty challenging wickets over the last few years. And it’s been a bit of a challenge for some of our young batsmen to adapt. They’ve got the skill and they’ve got the ability. They’ve come here by scoring a lot of runs in domestic cricket. They are being picked on merit and not out of nowhere. And sometimes it does take time for people to adjust. A lot of players are quite young, in a sense that a lot of these guys do play a lot of white-ball cricket and also maybe don’t get a lot of time to get to play first-class cricket.”

It came right down to the wire in Hyderabad but it’s England who win the closely-fought contest.#TeamIndia will aim to bounce back in the next game.

Scorecard ▶️ https://t.co/HGTxXf8b1E#INDvENG | @IDFCFIRSTBank pic.twitter.com/OcmEgKCjUT

— BCCI (@BCCI) January 28, 2024

No domestic practice

That the current crop of batsmen doesn’t necessarily get the chance to play first-class cricket is an issue a lot of domestic coaches have been voicing their concern about, especially when they struggle against novice overseas spinners. And despite the Ranji Trophy beginning in the first week of January, barring Shreyas, none of the other India batsmen featured in it and came into the Test series on the back of T20Is against Afghanistan.

Having asked Shreyas to play for Mumbai, India didn’t do the same with Gill, who has been struggling of late in red-ball cricket. Not the best player of spin, in both the innings here, he looked the most tentative, and was a long way away from the authoritative batsman he is in limited-overs cricket.

“I wouldn’t be so harsh to judge them on today. I wouldn’t say this was a flat wicket by any stretch of imagination. It turned through the course of the game. It allowed you to score runs. And as we saw even in the fourth innings, you could score runs, but it was still challenging. When it gets to these kinds of situations, you have to give credit to the bowlers. They were able to pitch the ball in the right areas, pitch it where it was challenging for us and spun the ball pretty appreciably. I think using your feet to the left-arm spinner with these kinds of conditions is fraught with risk, probably you have to play a little bit more square of the wicket. Having said that, that’s a high risk shot as well,” Dravid said.

Just absolute scenes 😍

🇮🇳 #INDvENG 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 | #EnglandCricket pic.twitter.com/qamsNLn96z

— England Cricket (@englandcricket) January 28, 2024

Having been troubled by Hartley here, India could also have a fully-fit Jack Leach at Visakhapatnam later this week. Given their past struggles against left-arm spinners, and not having an X-factor batsman such as Rishabh Pant, in the coming days India have a real task at hand to neutralise Hartley and Leach. To add to their worries, there is a strong chance England will bring in off-spinner Shoaib Bashir – who linked up with the squad here on Sunday – another tribe that has troubled them.

“I think when you have a turning track and you have a good left-arm spinner who is able to pitch it in line with the stumps and just sort of in a difficult area, it is going to be a challenge. I think as the series goes on, it’s going to be something that we’re going to have to counter and get better at and develop some plans and strategies around,” Dravid said.

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