Responsibility rests on India’s young batters to quickly learn and maintain consistency

PUNE: Rohit Sharma, 37, and Virat Kohli, who is approaching 36, are the two stalwarts from the group of batters who rose together in the 2010s and continue to represent the national team. Alongside Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane, they have been the mainstay of India's batting lineup, playing a crucial role in the team's successful run.

One by one, their international innings is ending. In the last one year, Rahane and Pujara went out; Rohit and Kohli are on their last laps.

Like it happened in the previous cycle, when Kohli’s batch took over from Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Virender Sehwag, a new generation of batters is looking to take over the mantle. In the team playing against New Zealand, the nucleus of the future is there – Yashasvi Jaiswal (22 years), Shubman Gill (25), Rishabh Pant (27) and Sarfaraz Khan (27). The two senior pros have a few years left in them but are not at their best, and the onus is on the younger crop to take over and make a difference.

India’s dramatic home Test series defeat against New Zealand has exposed the batting frailties. It shows that the next crop of batters have some way to go in the art of Test batting.

In the longer format, if you want to win you need some level of consistency. Right now, the team management doesn’t know what they will get from this batting unit. They may hit 400 one day, but the next day they could fold up for 150. In the first Test at Bengaluru, India crashed to 46 all out; in the second innings they hammered 462, but in the second Test they again crumbled to 156 and 245.

The emphasis on aggressive cricket has left the team vulnerable to regular collapses. When that happens, you are behind the game. Then the team is left hoping for special performances in batting or bowling to bail the side. Sometimes one will manage, like against Bangladesh, but it won’t happen against all opposition. Against New Zealand it didn’t as defeats by eight wickets and 113 runs showed.

The young batters will have to understand and figure out the best way to be consistent. Play as per the challenges the red-ball format throws up and give the bowlers a total to put pressure on the opposition. In Pune, New Zealand too didn’t cross 260 in either innings, but Indian batters failed to put runs on the board.

Most of all, the New Zealand attack exposed the Indian batters’ weakness against spinners on turning surfaces. The likes of Gill and Sarfaraz won’t get a better lesson than the second Test facing Mitchell Santner. In any other format, you can get away from the most dangerous bowler by playing out his spell. But what do you do when he bowls unchanged from one end? There was simply no way out against Santner in Pune. The left-arm spinner bowled almost 50 per cent of the team’s overs for a 13-wicket match haul.

No amount of white-ball cricket would have prepared for batting on the Pune pitch with the ball turning sharply, bouncing off a length and sometimes staying low. The younger generation will have to grasp the nuances of Test batting better. On such tracks, the tactics of former India opener Virender Sehwag makes for a good case study -- he played a cat-and-mouse game to manoeuvre the opposition bowlers by playing with their fields. That’s what New Zealand did in the two Tests, adopting a better gameplan on the surface, which skipper Rohit acknowledged.

“New Zealand batters have shown that if you play with a method and put pressure on the bowler then it will work,” he said. “That’s one thing we wanted to do as a team, try and play the reverse sweep; because when you do those kinds of things, they have to take one extra man from the front and put him behind, and that allows you to play straighter and hit those gaps. That is what New Zealand did. They exploited those fielders, played that reverse and sweep and paddle.”

Rohit acknowledged that all batters won’t be comfortable playing the sweep shot. “We need to try and find ways to score runs, because when you are playing on pitches like this where the odd ball turns, the odd ball comes with the arm, you have to find options to do different things; and then when you play with that field, it allows you to play with a straighter bat.”

In Test cricket, the game can be played in different ways depending on the situation and the challenge in front. The batters need to figure out what works for them and for the team. Essentially, it is about finding that consistency. The problem is that because the seniors are not doing well, the young guns need to do it quickly.

With the tough Australia Test tour next, the pressure is on them to show the right batting approach in the third Test starting at the Wankhede Stadium on Friday.