India vs England: Rahul Dravid, it’s not the pitch, it’s the batting

India vs England: Rahul Dravid, it’s not the pitch, it’s the batting

The next time Rahul Dravid walks to the pitch for one of his inspections before and during the game, the curator might well jibe, ‘Problem idhar nahi, dressing room mey hai’ (there isn’t a problem here, it’s in the dressing room).

In a remarkable first hour of play, on a pitch with no devils, India contrived to lose three quick wickets after winning the toss. It could well have been four before the total reached 50, and who knows how many more after that but Joe Root dropped an offering from Rohit Sharma, who went on to score a half-century.

The dismissals could be seen through the prism of Rohit’s reactions. At one point when Rajat Patidar fell, Rohit dropped his bat to the ground, turned square and stared at the big screen to see if it revealed something about the pitch that he hadn’t seen in the real world. It didn’t.

The ball from left-arm spinner Tom Hartley turned a bit but Patidar had dragged himself into a bubble of distress. He had initially shaped to get forward, then shaped to cut – in the end, he just offered a weird tap at it without pulling out of the shot in time and the ball ballooned ever so slowly to short cover, who would have been placed there for the uppish drive and not this.

But Patidar wasn’t the real failure of the first hour; Shubman Gill was. Everything seemed inevitable about it. The signs were there at the nets itself a day prior when he was bowled, edger a couple, and trapped on the pad with similar short-of-length skidders from throw downs from Vikram Rathour and Co. Gill would try a couple of different forward strides – short and longer. Not much worked there.

Not much worked live in the game. With the ever-present problem of weight transfer, he has resorted to a while now on his hands doing the jailbreak for him. But one good ball was enough for the doubts to flood in. It was a nip-backer from Mark Wood and Gill was late and also down the wrong line and the ball whizzed over the stumps. Next ball, another short-of-length delivery that landed a tad closer to the off-stump line, straightened outside off and Gill was pushing at it, hoping his hands would pull him out of trouble. They didn’t and a simple edge resulted.

As the crowd gasped, Rohit’s face creased. And he stared. Gill had his head down as he trudged past before throwing one brief look at the big screen before deciding against such masochism and continuing his walk.

A short while earlier, Rohit looked a tad surprised when Yashasvi Jaiswal fell to a soft dismissal. It was the regular back-of-length angler from Wood but for some reason, Jaiswal was squared-up and his hands betrayed him: they hung the bat out as if it were a slip-catch training session to find Root at first slip.

India decided against sending in any of the two debutants – Sarfaraz Khan and Dhruv Jorel, and so the left-handed Ravindra Jadeja walked in at the fall of the third wicket.

There was more drama in the second hour, too, as Rohit teased the English fielders with his attacking urges now and then. He had slog-swept Hartley to the midwicket boundary and when he tried to repeat the shot, the ball flew off the outside edge to the left of the first slip at not-too-fast-a-pace but Root clanged the unexpected offering.

Later on, Rohit charged Anderson but just about scooped one over mid-on. Until then, Anderson and Wood tested him with contrasting methods. Anderson with his curlers around the off stump that shaped away and came in depending on his plan and Rohit was beaten on both the edges a few times. Once, he was rapped on the pad and the umpire had even given him out but the DRS showed a tiny deflection of the bat.

Wood went with the bouncers tactics against him with three men at the deep: a fine-leg, a deep backward square-leg and a deep square-leg. Rohit managed to play down his pulls on this pitch but one ball gunned for his throat, got him in an awkward tangle, but the gloved ball fell on the untenanted region on the off.

On a pitch where they won the toss and where a big total was predicted by everyone, India have found a way to slip into a mini-crisis. England have been absolutely spot-on with the gameplay and field sets. For Patidar, they had a leg slip for pacers and two covers for the spinner. For Jadeja, they had a leg gully before he was moved to a deepish short leg very square. For Gill, they didn’t have to do much tinkering with the field.

England would rue that dropped chance. Else, they could well have grabbed a few more before lunch on a bizarre opening session’s play.

As Indians retreated to lunch, just a few feet away, in the nets outside the arena, cheteshwar pujara was batting .

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