After the curtains come down on the eleventh season of the Indian Premier League, India is slated to host Afghanistan’s maiden Test match from June 14-18 at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore. Incidentally, Afghanistan earned their Test status alongside Ireland in June last year, and this will be the first time the Afghans will square off against India in a bilateral series.
With Virat Kohli set to miss the historic game owing to his upcoming stint with Surrey CCC in the English county circuit, fans won’t be able to witness a face-off between the Indian skipper and Afghanistan’s spin sensation Rashid Khan—who has dismissed the former twice in the ongoing season of the IPL.
That said, there are more reasons than one why cricket enthusiasts and national selectors alike would observe the proceedings of the one-off Test very closely, even though it seems like an apparent no-contest between the numero-uno Test team of the world and a team ranked twelfth.
We list down five such reasons:
- Ajinkya Rahane’s Performance
Ajinkya Rahane, once considered the best technician among the current crop of Indian batsmen, has blown hot and cold with the bat in IPL-2018. The Mumbai batsman who will serve as the stand-in skipper for the Afghanistan Test has managed to score just 291 runs @ 26.45 in fourteen outings for the Rajasthan Royals (at the time of writing this article) this season.
Moreover, his strike-rate (120.74) has also taken a dip as compared to the previous seasons. Although Test cricket is a different ball game altogether, it is not uncommon to find a cricketer’s poor form in one format percolating into a distinct format, accompanied by a slump in confidence and self-belief.
With a host of exciting young players waiting in the wings to claim the number-five batting position in the Indian Test team and two daunting tours to England and Australia awaiting India later this year, the 29-year old will be under immense pressure to lead from the front and redeem his worth in the international arena.
- India’s Opening Conundrum
Which two batsmen should open the innings for India in Bangalore? Should the team management play a left-hand/right-hand combination? Is Murali Vijay going to get the axe from the playing XI? Too many questions to clutter your mind with.But no definite answers.
As expected, all three of Murali Vijay, Shikhar Dhawan and KL Rahul have found a berth each in the fifteen-member squad. However, it remains to be seen which two openers make the cut for the solitary Test. Given the kind of form he has shown in his fourteen innings for an inconsistent Kings XI Punjab this season, it would be tantamount to farce if Rahul is not considered for the opening slot.
Shikhar Dhawan, meanwhile, has come good with the willow in the business end of the tournament after enduring a quiet middle phase since his return from a brief injury layoff. On the other hand, Murali Vijay has been missing out of action for quite some time now.
The last time he turned up for India was in the Johannesburg Test of India’s tour of South Africa back in January 2018, and a saturated CSK top-order meant a lone opportunity for him in IPL-2018, which he failed to seize by getting out for only a dozen runs against Kings XI Punjab in April. In this scenario, Rahul and Dhawan should be the automatic choices to open the batting against the Afghans. But, if recent Test stats are anything to go by, Rahul’s last five innings in whites have yielded a meagre 37 runs @ 7.2, while Dhawan and Vijay have fared slightly better on this count with averages of 43.6 and 20.20 to their credit respectively.
With India scheduled to play a five-match away Test series against England in August-September, the openers must eye this forthcoming contest against Afghanistan to iron out their respective deficiencies and get back to top condition before they face the tough challenge of negotiating fiery spells from England’s pace trio on seaming English wickets.
- How The Afghans Approach Test Cricket
Afghanistan is known for playing an explosive brand of cricket and it will be interesting to see how the Asghar Stanikzai-led side adapts its game to cricket’s traditional format.
The Afghans play only a handful four-day games in a year—around ten—and their limited exposure to the longer format may work in favour of the hosts. Nonetheless, Afghanistan skipper Stanikzai is upbeat about dishing out a tough challenge to Ajinkya Rahane and co. as a new epoch beckons Afghanistan cricket.
‘’Irrespective of who is playing, everyone knows how tough it is to face India in India. It will be a great learning experience but we are surely not overawed by the challenge. We will be playing to win. We have world-class spinners in our team and they can trouble India”, the 30-year old told reporters on the sidelines of a training camp in Greater Noida last week when he was asked whether it would be an advantage to lock horns with an Indian team minus Virat Kohli.
Spin has been Afghanistan’s stronger suit over the years and Stanikzai firmly believes that the conditions in Bangalore and the experience of playing in the lucrative IPL will come in handy for Afghan spin-twins Rashid Khan and Mujeeb Ur Rahman. “Spin is our strength—there is no doubt about that. We have pacers too, Dawlat and Shapoor Zadran, who can bowl at 140 kmph plus speeds. So we have the resources”, Stanikzai added. Their batting though will be subject to close scrutiny by critics as the rigours of Test cricket involve staying rooted to the crease for long hours—almost an untrodden field for the visitors.
Whether the mercurial Mohammad Shahzad will be able to see off the opening bursts from Umesh Yadav and Mohammad Shami effectively, or whether the experienced Mohammad Nabi will manage to bail his team out of trouble in case wickets tumble down in a heap will define Afghanistan’s credentials at the highest level of the game. Maybe they can take a leaf out of Ireland’s book in this regard, who nearly accomplished the improbable task of winning their debut Test against a young Pakistani side in Dublin earlier this month after putting in a brave-hearted effort on the field for five days.
[*Pakistan won the Test by five wickets]
2. IS AFGHANISTAN’S SPIN DUO GOOD ENOUGH TO SHINE IN TESTS?
Few youngsters have made more buzz on the global cricket circuit in recent years than nineteen-year-old Rashid Khan has. A cunning operator who loves to exhibit his oeuvre of variations every now and then, Rashid has been one of the hottest properties on display in limited-overs cricket over the last couple of years. The real acid test awaits him now.
For him to evolve from a T20 mercenary to an esteemed leg-spinner, Rashid must work out a way to excel in Test cricket—a format founded on the tenets of discipline, patience, keen alertness and a stomach for fight. Partnering him in the spin department will be teenage wonder Mujeeb Ur Rahman who left everyone awestruck with his fantastic breakthrough season for the Kings XI Punjab in which he picked up 14 wickets from 11 games at an economy rate of 6.99.
A near-carbon-copy of Rashid with a wide array of tricks in his armoury, Mujeeb is adept at bowling his stock delivery (the leg break) as also the occasional googly and the carom ball.
As far as their first-class records are concerned, Rashid has taken 35 first-class wickets in four matches @ 15.05 apiece, whereas Mujeeb who has yet to make his first-class debut, has scalped 43 List-A wickets @ 19.27 apiece from twenty-two games. More than anything else, the Test match would serve as a learning curve for this young duo that will hold the key to Afghanistan’s Test fortunes in the long run.
1. Who Bats at Five For India?
As if the opening conundrum was not enough, here’s one more piece of the batting puzzle which is likely to give the Indian think-tank a selection headache, albeit a happy headache. With the rest of the batting order looking pretty much settled, the only slot which will see more than one candidate vying for it is the number-five batting slot in the Indian line-up. As many as three candidates are in contention to essay the role of number five in the Bangalore Test, but only one of them will get a look-in.
It could well be Mumbai’s Shreyas Iyer who has made it to the Indian Test squad on the back of a decent domestic season and an equally fruitful IPL season for the Delhi Daredevils, in which he aggregated 411 runs from 14 matches @ 37.36 after he took over as captain midwaythrough the tournament, or it could also be Karnataka’s Karun Nair—who, after falling out of favour with the national selectors, courtesy a series of dismal scores following his maiden triple hundred against England in Chennai in 2016—has made a comeback after a span of fourteen months.
Also, don’t rule out the possibility of seeing KL Rahul walk out to bat at number-four either as it would provide the team management with an opportunity to try out all their three openers in the same playing XI, which in turn would give the troika some crucial match practice ahead of the much-vaunted England tour.
PLAYERS TO WATCH OUT FOR:-
INDIA: KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Ravichandran Ashwin and Umesh Yadav.
AFGHANISTAN: Rashid Khan, Md. Nabi, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Md. Shahzad and Dawlat Zadran.