Mumbai
As the day wore on, the mower made an appearance, and the match surface began to wear a balder look in sharp contrast to the adjoining practice pitches. With the grass shaven off and the Wankhede pitch being exposed to the sun all day, there was no hiding from the pre-match routine of drying up the surface.
The Mumbai pitch will take turn, how soon though is anybody’s guess. But the hosts can ill-afford to have another encounter with a pitch whose vagaries they cannot predict. India head coach Gautam Gambhir called it a ‘decent wicket on which you can get in and make most of’. That’s what Indian batters are desperately after. That would also keep the holiday crowd entertained, who would have chosen the Test match starting Friday, over Diwali festivities. If it begins to turn sharply sooner than mandated by ICC’s pitch manual, India’s famed spinners R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja must return to their best.
In the final day of preparations ahead of the third Test, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill batted besides each other facing the entire battery of Indian spinners on practice wickets where the ball turned a lot. Soon after, Virat Kohi and Rohit Sharma entered the scenes.
After a lengthy day’s work in training, a mid-pitch conference among the Indian thinktank followed. Unlike the first Test in Bengaluru, they cannot put a foot wrong here should the flip of the toss come right. The home side is in unchartered territory. Trailing 0-2 with a match in hand. The last time they lost all Tests in a home series was in the year 2000 to South Africa, but that was a two-Test series.
Chatter around India’s batting debacle in Pune refuses to die down. After plenty of talk of playing differently and batting outside the comfort zone, Gambhir got down to the basics.
“To be a successful Test cricketer, you look at Virat, all the great cricketers over a long period of time, they have had a great defence. The foundation of your batting is great defence and you take it up from there,” he said. “We need to keep defending better. Especially on a turning track. If you can concentrate on defence, a lot of things can be sorted. You are so used to muscling the ball with T20 cricket, that sometimes you forget to play with soft hands, which used to happen ten years back. A complete cricketer is someone who can adapt.”
Gambhir reiterated the belief he had held before the series that they could bat for two days if required. But a shock series loss following batting collapses has meant his coaching tenure has got off to a shaky start. It has left India scrambling for World Test Championship points to make the final.
The new head coach admitted they may have to be more discerning while picking batters with red ball skill sets. “It’s difficult to say, but going forward we will have to identify solid red-ball cricketers. Ultimately, to get results you will have to get players who can play for 4-5 days. We need to bat sessions as well. We know we have the bowling attack to take 20 wickets. But identifying red ball batters is very very important,” he said.
Rohit’s home swansong?
For now, Gambhir is relying heavily on captain Rohit’s knowhow. This could well be Rohit’s final Test match at home. The next one in India is slated for October 2025, by when Rohit would be 38 and unlikely to commit to a complete two-year WTC cycle. He’s had many impactful performances with the bat in his 63-Test career, which almost never found wheels, until they did, belatedly.
As a captain in white-ball cricket, Rohit’s legacy is etched in glory, having led India to the T20 World Cup success and one of the finest campaigns in ODI World Cups, during the 2023 edition. To leave behind a similar legacy as India’s Test captain, he faces the sternest of tests in the next 11 games – five in Australia and five in England separated by the WTC final. To begin with, he and his team needs to reclaim home glory at the familiar climes of the Wankhede stadium, which is celebrating fifty years of hosting Test cricket from 1975 when Clive Lloyd’s West Indies beat Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi-led India.
Those were days when India pacers were expected to just wear out the new ball. Here they will have Mohammed Siraj and Akash Deep to make early inroads with Jasprit Bumrah sitting out to manage his workload. There’s also the extreme option to play four spinners.
For New Zealand, Matt Henry, who made a brief appearance in training, still appeared in discomfort. But the match will still be won and lost by spin – how the spinners bowl and how the batters counter them.
