Opinion Express View on India’s Test win: The young ones

The anxiety in fans had increased once injuries ruled out KL Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja in addition to the news that Virat Kohli won’t be available for the entire series. Indian batting looked brittle and even young guns like Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer were in a difficult situation.

For the first time, R Ashwin, Jadeja, and Axar Patel looked a touch “rattled”, in former England batsman Kevin Pietersen’s words. And visuals of Rahul Dravid visiting the pitch and talking with curators became viral. The undercurrent was that India will need to change their pitches. They did, preparing more batting-friendly tracks to counter England’s inexperienced spinners and their one speedster Mark Wood. India banked on pacer Jasprit Bumrah to sprinkle his magic but the batting was down to the youngsters.

One by one, they stood up. Yashasvi Jaiswal showed that his story isn’t just a romantic tale of a boy who sold panipuris making it to the big league. Gill, who as this newspaper reported, was told by the team management to be ready to step down to domestic cricket if his form doesn’t improve, responded with a hundred.

Not everyone flourished: Shreyas Iyer fell, Axar Patel fell, KS Bharat fell. But India did enough to win. In the third Test at Rajkot, more young guns stared down the English snipers. Sarfaraz Khan impressed on debut, wicketkeeper Dhruv Jurel showed spark.

In the next game at Ranchi, without Bumrah, Akash Deep laid the groundwork before Ashwin ensured all is well with his world and Kuldeep Yadav again showed why he should be considered ahead of Axar in future elevens. Jurel exploded with two game-turning knocks and Gill played his character-defining innings in the chase as the newcomers combined with the seniors to complete a memorable series triumph.