India vs England 2016: How the debutants fared
Haseeb Hameed has been England’s find of the season
Shifting over from domestic cricket to International cricket for the first time is never a piece of cake. Yet, every player dreams of representing their nation and feature in the squad if not make the eleven. For some of them, things don’t often go as planned, while others back up their selection with a string of astute performances.
The recently concluded India-England series has seen five players (two from India and three from England) making their debut. England has been humbled by an effervescent bunch of Indian cricketers by a margin of 4-0 and the series was one-way traffic. Nonetheless, it’s the debutants who have been the centre of scrutiny in the series.
#1 Haseeb Hameed
England was in dire requisite of an opener to partner Alastair Cook and that’s when Haseeb Hameed came to the fore. At the tender age of 19, Hammed has demonstrated his credentials as an incisive batsman. The runs didn’t flow of his bat, but it’s the manner in which he got them earned him accolades from round the globe.
In a short span of three Tests, the ‘Baby Boycott’ from England has already had a couple of striking shows with the willow. In his debut Test at Rajkot, with a score of 82, he spurred England to a decent second innings total.
The grit in Hameed was on show during the third Test at Mohali when he strode out to bat at number eight with a broken finger. The pain and grimace wasn’t enough to overshadow Hameed’s robustness both as an individual and as a batsman. He scored a hard-fought 59 runs off 156 balls.
Though India chased down the target in a canter, it was Hameed who carried England single-handedly from a score of 107/6 to 236 all out. Later, due to his injury, Hameed was ruled out of the series, but he played well enough to stay in contention for further Tests in the future. Let’s take a look at Hammeed’s numbers in the series
| Batting | |||||||
| Matches | Runs | Average | Strike-Rate | Fifties | Hundreds | Best | Conversion-Rate |
| 3 | 219 | 43.80 | 34.21 | 2 | 0 | 82 | 0 |