Chennai, Sep 16: Rohit Sharma and Co had another extensive training session in the build up to the first Test against Bangladesh with all 16 squad members turning for practice at the Chepauk here on Monday.
After a day off, the India squad members took part in their third training session since their arrival here last week. The first Test begins on Thursday.
As it is often the case, Virat Kohli was among the first set of batters to hit the nets. In the adjacent net was southpaw Yashasvi Jaiswal as both him and Kohli faced Jasprit Bumrah and home hero R Ashwin. The next set of batters included skipper Rohit, Shubman Gill and Sarfaraz Khan, the last named player arriving here after taking part in the second round Duleep Trophy match in Anantapur. The captain focussed on playing spinners keeping Bangladesh’s slow bowling attack in mind.
Ravindra Jadeja, Rishabh Pant and pacer Mohammed Siraj too faced local bowlers and significant amount of throwdowns.
The practise pitch at the main square offered a decent amount of bounce.
India will have two more practice sessions scheduled before the series opener against Bangladesh, who are riding on the confidence of their series sweep in Pakistan.
Most players in the playing eleven select themselves. The Chennai surface usually favour the spinners and there is likelihood of India going into the game with three spinners and two pacers.
The spinners expected to feature are Ashwin, Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav while Bumrah and Siraj will share workload in the pace department. Axar Patel, despite his impressive all-round returns across formats, may have to sit out.
On the batting front, Pant is expected to make his Test return after a gap of almost two years. Dhruv Jurel, who impressed his debut series against England, will be benched in that case.
Bumrah, others pacers trouble Jaiswal
Ask any international cricketer worth his salt and he would tell you about how important the second season is after a stellar first season.
If sky-rocketing expectations are one aspect of it, the other part comprises of opposition’s familiarity with his game and enough on-ground material available for dissection.
As Jaiswal eyes to beat second season blues, he can consider himself lucky that he gets to face Bumrah in the nets, the best in the business that you want to face before real action begins.
During Monday’s net session, Bumrah repeatedly made short work of the Mumbai youngster often sending his off-stump cart-wheeling for fun. Jaiswal would hope that sketchy form in the nets wouldn’t be carried in the opening Test against Bangladesh starting here on September 19.
With 10 Tests this season, Jaiswal coming in with heady reputation as one of the future megastar in making having scored 1000 plus runs in his first 9 Tests with 700 plus coming against England in a single series.
But Jaiswal’s critics will certainly point out that in those nine games, there were a couple against South Africa on bouncy tracks of Centurion and Newlands (Cape Town) where he didn’t exactly feel comfortable against pace and bounce.
While England series, where he played a lot of slow bowlers, was a blockbuster, Jaiswal’s real test will be five Tests in Australia later this year.
And before he faces Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, the two tall Bangladeshi speed merchants Taskin Ahmed and Nahid Rana will also test him with pace and bounce.
Jaiswal’s first-class season hasn’t exactly started off well with two low scores in Duleep Trophy where Avesh Khan and Khaleel Ahmed did trouble him with extra bounce, something which is still work in progress.
On the day, Bumrah, who bowled a lot to Jaiswal, twice got him clean bowled and beat the outside edge of his bat a number of times. Bumrah, got the ball to shape away from Jaiswal, who was seen beaten for pace and swing. He certainly didn’t look in best of touch and it wasn’t pleasant sight to find his stumps flying all over the place as he was seen playing with hard hands trying to push hard at deliveries.
In fact, he was troubled by all three – pace, bounce and swing. It didn’t seem that he was sure about where his off-stump was.
And it was not just Bumrah but even net bowlers like Simarjeet Singh, Gurnoor Brar and Gurjanpreet Singh got past his outside edge time and again.
At one point, Kohli was seen talking to him trying to explain where he was going wrong.
Both Kohli and Jaiswal took turns and batted for nearly an hour, facing around 50 balls.
During this session, Kohli unleashed trademark cover drive and on-drive.
As for Jaiswal, he was trying to leave a lot of deliveries from length, especially ones from Bumrah.
With the practice pitch made of red soil, the track offered recent bounce, and playing shots were not seamless.
Bumrah also managed to somewhat trouble Kohli, with some of his deliveries bowled into his pads.
After Bumrah was done with his spell of nearly five overs, both batters faced the practice bowlers.
Jaiswal was more comfortable against spinners as he at times rocked back to play the square cut.
And there was Pant, who has always treated deliveries from left-arm spinners with a lot of disdain as he launched into the Ajit Rams and M Siddharths with ease. (PTI)
