Has the era of Indian tailenders begun?
Remember when it used to be only a matter of minutes for India's innings to end as soon as the lower order came into bat? Well, that's just in memory now.
Like technology, cricket too has evolved to a great extent over the years. While a lot of Indian batsmen have done miracles with the ball, the bowlers never seemed to prove themselves with the bat. In fact, since 2018 India's last three batsmen have had the worst average in tests. However, if we were to go by the team's ongoing series with England the trend is changing.
Though the weather in the first test at Trent Bridge robbed India of the result, its initially weak lower order contributed a significant 50 runs. Bumrah scored his then career-best of 28, while Shami and Siraj managed to stay unbeaten at 13 and 7 respectively. This helped India to a 95-run first-innings lead. Praising the effort, skipper Virat Kohil said:
"Getting 50-plus runs from those three bowlers was like gold dust for us. We'd been talking about a lead of 40-odd, and then we got to a lead of 95 purely because of their efforts."
If only one knew the damage they would do in the second test then.
India had a lead of 154 when they ended Day 4 at Lord's. While Rishabh Pant was the only strong batsman at the crease, his wicket was soon picked at the start of the final day. Ishant Sharma, who was on the other end, followed Pant to the pavilion soon after.
And then walked in Shami and Bumrah. Shami didn't shy away from expressing himself with the bat as he took on all of England's bowlers one by one. And while Anderson was determined to give Bumrah the same treatment the fast bowler gave him while he was at the crease, Jasprit stood his ground.
During Mark Wood's bowling when Bumrah smacked his short delivery towards the square, it became clear there was no stopping these two. Shami and Bumrah scored their personal bests of 56* and 34* respectively. The pair put on a much-needed partnership of 89 runs to place India in an unassailable position.
Virat Kohli was super proud of their efforts and was seen quoting to bcci.tv:
"Unbelievable. We all knew that we are counting on Rishabh to carry through with the tail and get us extra runs. We were thinking, 'Okay, 200 would be great. 175-180, we'll take that as well to have a crack at them.' But 280 is something we could not have imagined.
Just shows that in this game, when you walk onto the field, you have a chance as an individual. If you have that belief to take that chance, special things can happen. Jasprit and Shami were outstanding – what they did shifted the momentum towards us. The opposition was completely out of the game."
While this series has put our tailenders on the world map, there have been significant contributions in the past too by our last three. Like Shami's 35-run partnership with Bhuvaneshwar Kumar against South Africa in Johannesburg in 2018. The target set for SA was 241 and Shami took a five-fer to help India win by 63 runs.
Siraj even scored a career-best 16* against England earlier this year in Chennai, where his 49-run partnership with Ashwin helped set a target of 482 for the opposition. And who could forget, Ishant Sharma's career-best of 57 against West Indies at Kingston. His 112-run partnership with Hanuma Vihari put India in the driver's seat.
As India clinch another one, taking a 2-1 lead in this five-match series, our tailenders will be the ones to watch out for in the final test at Old Trafford. For when they get going with the bat, they make test cricket 10x more exciting.