In recent times Indian team’s biggest weakness is the resistance shown by the lower-order batsmen. They tend to get out quickly and easily to the opponent’s bowling. In a contrasting fashion, Indian bowlers have seemed to have difficulty in getting the wickets of lower-order batsmen of the opposing team. If you look at the average of three batsmen for India, they seemed to have the worst average when compared to all test-playing nations from the year 2018.
But it was very surprising to see how the lower middle-order batsman played against the England bowlers in the Nottingham Test. The thing which made it very interesting was a low-scoring game and also most of the top-order batsmen were struggling to score runs on that pitch. India lost their seventh wicket in the score of 205 in the first innings. But the likes of Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, and Mohammed Siraj contributed with the bat and pushed the first innings total of 278.
Jasprit Bumrah scored his career-best of 28 runs in the first innings against England. There were some little contributions along the way by Mohammed Shami and Mohammed Siraj which pushed the first-innings lead to 95 runs in a low-scoring match. But it was very unfortunate first test could not produce any result and the final day was washed out due to rain on Sunday.
Virat Kohli the Indian captain highly praised who managed to contribute together more than 50 plus runs to the first innings total. The Indian captain felt that those runs were like ’gold dust.
Virat Kohli commented on lower-order batsman contribution after the first test ended in a draw “They ‘ve been in the nets regularly, wanting to contribute regularly, wanting to contribute to the team”.
“Getting 50 plus runs from those three bowlers was like gold does for us”.
“We have been talking about a lead of 40-odd and then we got to a lead of 95 purely because of their efforts”.
When you compare it to England’s lower-order batsman in the first test, they only managed to add 20 runs batting in both innings in the series opener.
“Just the grit and determination”, Kohli said.” As opposition, when the bowlers get runs it can be annoying. They did a tremendous job with the bat”.
Seeing the contribution from the lower middle-order batsman in the first test match in Nottingham. India can be tempted to go with the same bowling option of four fast bowlers and one spinner against England in the remaining four tests.
Virat Kohli concluded by saying “This looks like the right template for us moving forward”. The second test of India tour of England is happening in Lord’s on Thursday.