Only once have India failed to chase a target below 150 in Tests – the infamous 81 all out after West Indies had set them a mere 120 to win in Bridgetown in 1997.
Current head coach Rahul Dravid was part of that collapse, and surely the prospect of a repeat must have haunted him when India were making a mess of chasing just 145 against Bangladesh in Dhaka.
But Ravichandran Ashwin and Shreyas Iyer dragged India back from the depths of 74 for 7 and saved them a massive embarrassment with a three-wicket win that gave the visitors the series 2-0.
Ashwin: gun under pressure
Ashwin’s Test record is staggering: 3043 runs at an average of 27.41, 449 wickets at 24.30. He is a modern great, and his numbers stack up well against the great seam-bowling all-rounders of the 1980s. Yet, there is another aspect of him that is not talked about as much: his calmness under pressure.
The most famous instance of that has to be the T20 World Cup game against Pakistan, in which he finished the game by leaving – actually leaving – a ball in the last over of a T20I to earn India a wide, and ended the match with a nerveless lofted drive over mid-off.
In Bangladesh, he may not have run through the batting, but made a vital 58 in the first Test in Chattogram after India were 278 for 6. In Dhaka, he removed three set batters – Najmul Hossain Shanto, Litton Das and Mominul Haque – in the first innings and gave India the first breakthrough in the second.
But it was his showing in the chase that got him the Player of the Match award. Dropped on 1 at forward short leg, Ashwin shut the door on Bangladesh thereafter with a brisk unbeaten 42, knowing all the while that one more wicket, and near-certain defeat stared at India; Umesh Yadav and Mohammed Siraj were in next, and they are hit-or-miss with the bat.
One of his five boundaries was edged between slip and gully, but the rest were all shots a specialist batter would have been proud of. Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan would later say that the moment Ashwin pulled Mehidy Hasan Miraz one-handed for six over midwicket was when he realised the game was gone.
India are really fortunate to have someone as accomplished with the bat as Ashwin available so low down the order. There is no desperation in his batting, even when the situation is desperate. Instead, his movements remain fluid, and the bat-swing is confident and committed. To do that on a day-four subcontinent pitch with fielders crowding and screaming around the bat and your team one bad choice away from utter disaster is as tough as it gets.
Shreyas Iyer: counters when it matters
In only a seven-Test career, Shreyas Iyer has already bailed India out of trouble numerous times. And he’s done that while battling a well-documented bouncer problem that the entire planet and the neighbouring galaxy know about.
One wonders how Cheteshwar Pujara could be named Player of the Series; he made a solid 90 in Chattogram indeed but his unbeaten 102 in the second innings came after India had flattened Bangladesh with a 150-run first-innings lead, and he did nothing in Dhaka. Meanwhile, Iyer rescued India from 112 for 4 and 94 for 4 in both first innings with 86 and 87. And while Ashwin may have got the headlines, it was Iyer who broke the back of the chase with four brave boundaries, two against Mehidy and two against Shakib. As Ashwin said, his Player of the Series was Iyer.
The Mumbai batter can be a conundrum to watch. He will hop and stab at short balls when he comes in, he will hit airy strokes just past fielders, but once he settles down, he brings a calculated limited-overs pulse to Test cricket that makes you think whether a different batter has suddenly arrived. He has a first-class strike-rate of nearly 80 so there is never any risk of him getting tied down.
And against spin, be it white-ball or red-ball cricket, he is equally effective. Even when he charged out to loft Shakib over mid-off for four in the chase, it did not look like he had taken some reckless risk. It was just as much part of the flow of his innings as the watchful pushes into gaps for singles. KL Rahul would say that after watching Iyer bat with such control, calm was restored in an unbearably tense Indian dressing room. There can perhaps be no greater compliment from your captain.
Iyer averages 65.55 in Asia in ten innings, which is way ahead of the man he replaced; Ajinkya Rahane was underwhelming in familiar conditions at 38.37. It is outside Asia where Rahane played some of his most memorable innings, and that is where Iyer’s next challenge lies, if he is to firmly establish himself in the Test middle order. And that will require him to get better at combating the bouncer.
Rishabh Pant: king of game-changing 90s
Just imagine Rishabh Pant’s record if he had been a little more careful in his 90s: 33 Tests, 11 hundreds. As things stand, though, he has six 90s and five hundreds. Only Andy Flower and Adam Gilchrist have made more Test runs as wicket-keepers at higher averages than Pant’s 2271 at 43.67, so he is already in elite company at only 25.
Not only did Bangladesh speak highly of him in press conferences as the key threat, they also spread the field out as soon as he walked in. Pant’s genius lies in making irrelevant the very fields that have been laid out to prevent the damage he can cause. Bangladesh had deployed deep midwicket and long-on, but it didn’t matter to Pant, who heaved five sixes in that region in his vital 93 in the first innings, clearing the boundary riders comfortably every time.
In Chattogram, he had been bowled while making room to cut Mehidy, so here, he just stopped doing so; instead, he would stand side-on in the crease, and wallop deliveries through midwicket, almost like a no-look whiplash flick. It is another matter that he departed while finally looking to back away again to Mehidy, but maybe those are just Pant things, and he wouldn’t be as much fun otherwise.
Unlike Iyer, who is often a nervy starter before he starts dictating the flow of play, Pant is usually switched on from ball one. Even in the Dhake chase, he reverse-swept his fifth ball from Shakib for four, and in the same over, also swept him for a couple more. How do you even plan to set a field for such a batter? At the same time, it remains a mystery why he hasn’t been able to have similar success in international white-ball cricket.
