A STAR IS BORN
‘Baby Boycott’ Hameed hits India for six to show he’s a class act as England prove they can compete at this level
IT was the moment when, excusing any suggestions of hyperbole, it became absolutely clear that a star of English cricket had been born.
Haseeb Hameed, a 19-year-old who looks young enough to still be at school and an opener so orthodox he has been dubbed the ‘Baby Boycott’ and the ‘Bolton blocker,’ took one step down the pitch and hit Ravindra Jadeja long and high into the stands for six.
It came in only the sixth over of the England second innings at a time when nerves would have started to jangle if early wickets had fallen and it came against an Indian spinner not used to being shown such disrespect at home.
Most pertinently, it showed India that England are not going to poke and prod their way to their doom in this five-Test series as they did, totally against coach Trevor Bayliss’s positive philosophy, during their disaster in Dhaka.
There will be those who will say that we should not get carried away by an unbeaten half-century from Hameed that almost certainly guaranteed England would come away from Rajkot today with, at the very least, a creditable draw.
But they would be wrong. For in Hameed England look to have found a teenager born to play Test cricket and capable of emulating Alastair Cook and Joe Root, who both made spectacular debuts on tours of India.
That wily old fox Bayliss clearly knew what he was talking about when he chided Hameed for being late for the team bus on his very first day with the team in Bangladesh by saying ‘just remember when you’ve played a hundred Tests some old b****** telling you off for being late before you’d played your first.’
Hameed smiled sheepishly at his coach then and smiled almost as self-consciously last night as he walked off with his captain at the close of the fourth day on 62 and with England 114 without loss and 163 ahead.
That six off a disbelieving Jadeja was only the second of his first-class career following a top-edged hook off Middlesex’s Toby Roland-Jones last summer but it is clear already there is more to his game than just defence.
Bayliss gets annoyed when people confuse his calls for positivity with all-out attack because he explains it as wanting players to be positive in defence and attack and to do everything with conviction. Hameed was positive to perfection.
That six was just the start and was not even the best shot he played, that honour falling to the exquisite cover drive for four off Ravichandran Ashwin who is used to getting his own way in this part of the world even more than Jadeja.
So desperate were Indiaia to dislodge Hameed that t Ashwin called for a ridiculous review when he was on 48 and soon after he late cut Amit Mishra for four to bring up his half-century, celebrated in under- stated fashion.
Up in the stands his fatherther Ismail, a native of Gujarat and the biggest influence on Hameed’s career, seemed to have a bit of dust in his eye, or just perhaps a tear, as he wiped it away surrounded by his ecstatic family.
Once again, just as in the first innings, it had been impossible for an outsider to know who was the opener on debut and the one with 10,000 Test runs to his name as Cook made his second nervous start of the match. The England captain was close to lbw to Jadeja before he had scored and suffered a couple of other shaky moments until he started to show the poise of the young man who has surely end ended the long search for Co Cook’s opening partner. Together they ensured t that any English fears of a repeat of the Nightm mare of Adelaide in 2 2006 — when they s scored 551 for six de declared and somehow lost — were eased and it was I India who could find themselves under pressure today. England had stuck to their task commendably with the ball and looked sure to have a bigger first innings lead than their eventual 49 when Virat Kohli was out in bizarre fashion when he stepped on his leg stump. That left India on 361 for six, still 176 behind, but Ashwin ensured the deficit was kept to a level which makes the draw the favourite today. His innings of 70 ended only when he became the last man to fall, holing out to deep mid-wicket.
England could have been a further 28 runs ahead at the fall of that last wicket but Cook, his mind clearly on batting again, dropped an absolute dolly to reprieve Mohammed Shami off the luckless Stuart Broad.
It took Moeen Ali to dismiss Ashwin and wrap things up but the most impressive England spinner, it is refreshing to report, was Adil Rashid.
This was his best performance in the white shirt of England as opposed to the red and blue ones of his limited-overs career, and he ended it with four wickets and an acceptable economy rate of fewer than four an over.
A bigger test for him looks sure to come in the second Test in Visakhapatnam next week with locals already muttering that a raging turner will be prepared there after the relatively innocuous surface of Rajkot. That in itself is a compliment to how England have played here after the loss of all 10 wickets in a session in Dhaka led to a humiliating first defeat by Bangladesh — and grave predictions of a 5-0 thrashing here.
They will have to play really well to leave here one up but they have shown India that, at the very least, they are in the fight. And that, in Haseeb Hameed, they have a youngster capable of mixing it with the big boys.