It’s been four years, 10 players and 53 Tests but we have our man
IT HAS taken England four years, 10 different players and 53 Tests, but they have finally found their man.
As Haseeb Hameed showed off his full range of strokes beneath Rajkot’s setting sun — drives and cuts, attack and defence, forward and back — it felt as if the search for Alastair Cook’s opening partner was over.
So much so that Geoff Boycott, the batsman with whom Hameed has been so regularly compared in his first full year of senior cricket, was moved to confess: ‘He looks like a proper player.’
There will be pitfalls ahead, as Boycott’s native Yorkshire wisdom obliged him to point out. But it is rare that a debutant, let alone a 19-yearold, makes such an impression. Cook himself did, 11 years ago, and so did Joe Root, in 2012-13, both at Nagpur. Now Hameed, in his father Ismail’s home state of Gujarat, has joined the club.
And when an Australian of the stature of Adam Gilchrist is moved to tweet that it ‘looks like @ ECBcricket have found an absolute beauty in @ HaseebHameed97’, you know England are on to something.
Hameed, who became only the third teenager to score a Test half-century for England — after Jack Crawford in 1906 and Denis Compton in 1937 — does not immediately look like a batsman capable of striking trepidation into opponents.
He may not have been shaving for long, and lacks the gym-honed frame of his teammates. And the way he rests his bat on his right shoulder during his stroll towards square leg between each ball brings to mind Dick Whittington’s knapsack rather than a tool of destruction.
But he did not average nearly 50 in division one of the county championship with Lancashire for nothing. And, in one startling shot in the sixth over, he proved that his two sobriquets — Baby Boycs and the Bolton Blocker — may need updating. Advancing at left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja, Hameed launched him over long-off for six. It was only his second six in firstclass cricket, and an early, encouraging sign that he won’t be pigeon-holed.
Boycott himself didn’t clear the ropes until his 22nd Test, while Cook — who spent Saturday evening looking on admiringly from the other end — waited until his 26th, when he top-edged a hook over the keeper’s head at Wellington.
None of Cook’s nine previous opening partners since the retirement of Andrew Strauss has looked so accomplished, so early on.
Nick Compton offered stickability in India in 2012-13, Michael Carberry battled hard against Mitchell Johnson in 2013-14, Adam Lyth took a century off New Zealand in his second Test, and Ben Duckett — now England’s No 4 — showed off all his tricks in Dhaka last month.
But none had that mix of composure, class, time and grace that mark out the best openers. Boycott said: ‘Hameed just looks like he’s got something about him. When I was 19, I was playing in the Yorkshire second division.’
The late cut off Amit Mishra which took Hameed to 50 was a typically elegant stroke in an innings which began with England leading by only 49, and with the threat of an Indian ambush lurking in the air.
Yet Hameed had already demonstrated his calmness during his first-innings 31, and now he set about outscoring his captain once more, reaching stumps on 62 to Cook’s 46.