Openers follow Kohli’s template and find a way to conquer moving ball
Hindia’s front-line batsmen have learnt from a lack of runs in 2018 with a better technique keeping the seam attack at bay
In India earlier this year, England were greeted by extreme conditions. The ball spat and turned viciously; amid much howling over how unfair conditions were, England’s fallibilities against the turning ball were exposed.
For India, a tour of England presents the reverse challenge: adapting to conditions in which the ball seams and swings far more menacingly than at home, especially in an era when English pitches have become notably spicier. It was a task for which India were ill-equipped on their last tour, in 2018. India’s opening partnership averaged just 24, a failing that heightened the task facing the middle order.
Against James Anderson and Stuart Broad with the new ball, conditions in 2018 were treacherous. But in England, they are seldom anything else. The challenge facing India’s top order this summer has been almost as taxing as three years ago: in the first 30 overs of India’s innings, the ball was seaming as much as 2018 and swinging only a fraction less. The difference was how the openers reacted.
As India’s opening pair, Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul, withstood sepulchral skies and England’s new ball attack to record a century stand at Lord’s, they lifted their total opening stands this summer to 257 – 20 more than in 2018, and in seven fewer innings.
Rohit is the owner of a curious Test record: the highest difference in averages at home and abroad of any batsman. A remarkable average of 79.5 at home tumbles by a full 50 runs away from India.
At the age of 34, it would be easy to think that it is too late for Rohit to adapt. Recent months have shown otherwise. After crucial contributions to India’s victory in Australia, Rohit’s approach in England has been to try to mimic his captain, Virat Kohli.
The transformation in Kohli’s batting in England in 2018, after an abject series in 2014, was founded on him batting further out of his crease, to nullify swing and seam movement. Rohit is following the Kohli template. Compared to his only previous Test in England, in 2014, he is batting a quarter of a metre further down the crease, making him less susceptible to misjudging the line. Playing with soft hands also means that there is less chance of an edge.
But while recalibrating his game, and playing with such meticulous care that he mustered only eight from his first 46 deliveries, Rohit has retained his essential strengths, evident in a sequence of five boundaries in seven balls against Sam Curran. Later, he pulled Mark Wood for four off the front foot, treating a 90mph bouncer with contempt.
While Rohit cruised to 50 from 83 balls, his opening partner played in a different key. Rahul is an orthodox, exquisite strokemaker but, as he found out in 2018, when he mustered just 150 runs in his first nine innings of the series, in England that is not always enough. Only in the final innings of that campaign, on the most benign wicket of the summer, did he discover the form he had misplaced with 149. Here, Rahul began in the same spirit of self-denial that had underpinned the start of his 84 at Trent Bridge. It took until the 41st over and his 108th ball to finally record his first boundary: an exquisite straight six off Moeen Ali. There are two distinct changes apparent in Rahul’s method. The first is his restraint against good-length deliveries. Rahul has scored 50 per cent slower against such balls this summer. The second is his greater willingness to play straight: over twice as many of his runs against pace bowlers have been scored in the “V”, down the ground, this summer. Unless England’s top order are able to heed some lessons from India’s, this series is heading inexorably in only one direction.