While it might be too early to read into what happened at the nets and draw conclusions, there were quite a few interesting notes to be taken.
Murali Vijay and Shikhar Dhawan teamed up, while Cheteshwar Pujara and KL Rahul took the nets beside them. Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane took the last net available. The pairing could have been to ensure the players get to know their potential partners better. The batsmen faced roughly four to six balls each before turning the strike over.
While the six batters batted for over an hour, the likes of Wriddhiman Saha, Rohit Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja and the tail only got a relatively lesser stint later into the session. There have been recent reports that Kohli prefers Rahul over Dhawan in the batting line-up, but with Rahul capable of doing the keeper's job as well, the team think thank will be pondering on what the ideal line-up would be.
More than the batsmen, it was the bowling set-up that drew much more intrigue. For the first hour and more, it was Ishant Sharma, Stuart Binny, Mohammad Shami, R Ashwin, Amit Mishra and Ravindra Jadeja (who joined the bowling team later) who bowled.
Binny enjoyed a good spell, consistently getting the ball to move both ways and beat the batsmen. Ishant, bowling at full tilt, looked in good rhythm. Amongst the spinners, Anil Kumble spoke at length to Mishra, evidently getting the leg-spinner to pitch the ball on leg-stump and spin away from the right-handed batsmen.
Against the spinners, the batsmen looked to play the sweep shot as often as possible. Kohli, Rahane and Vijay even tried the reverse-sweep on many occasions. Vijayreturnedto practice again later to work on, playing the short ball and the sweep. He even had KL Rahul throw down some hits when the otherbowlers were busy bowling at the other nets or resting.
English, Tamil and a lot of Hindi
After an intense first session, Jadeja, Saha, Rohit, Binny and Mishra took over with the bat while Shardul Thakur, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Umesh Yadav, Pujara and Vijay started to bowl.
There was much chatter in the spinners' net with Vijay, Pujara and Ashwin taunting the batsmen often. When Dhawan continued to employ the sweep to play Ashwin, the off-spinner shouted to Vijay in Tamil, that he is going to get let Dhawan play the shot and bowl him around the legs. Before Ashwin got the chance, however, the batsmen had to switch nets.
Pujara, who had admitted that he was working hard on his leg-spin, put Rohit in a tough spot on an occasion or two. But the batsman shunned down the part-timer, saying he was appealing no matter where Rohit hit the ball.
When it was Vijay's turn to bowl, he threw Jadeja the challenge to hit him over the top. While Jadeja managed to get a few big hits away, Vijay, true to the Caribbean spirit, broke into a celebratory jig every time Jadeja failed.
Binny had a short scare when a short-ball from the side-arm bowler Raghavendra reared up and hit his right glove. Binny walked off soon after, but did not look too perturbed about the hit.
There was some cheer for the small group of people who had gathered to watch the session when Jadeja inside-edged a ball onto his off-stump.
'Baaal, man' came the cry from a far. 'Bowled,' he continued, as Jadeja fixed his disturbed stumps.
No comments:
Post a Comment