Arpit Vasavada’s journey has been intricately linked to his friend Cheteshwar Pujara. They grew up together in the same Railway township of Rajkot, learnt the game from Cheteshwar’s father Arvind, and later moved to the same locality on the outskirts near the Jamnagar highway. When Vasavada hit a match-turning 139 in the Ranji Trophy semifinal against Gujarat, rescuing his team from 15 for 5 in the second innings, he felt he had fulfilled a long-time wish to produce a stirring knock, just like Pujara often does.
He took the next step on the second day of the final – hitting a priceless hundred, adding 142 runs in over five hours with his friend, with their coach in the stands, and tilting the balance towards Saurashtra after a dogged day of cricket. At stumps, Saurashtra were 384 for 8, with the lower-order pair at the crease – Chirag Jani and Dharmendrasinh Jadeja – known to regularly resist the opposition.
After two days, the first innings is yet to be completed, 178 runs trickled on a pitch where the ball started to keep low, especially in the last session, and played a bit slow. The aim of Vasavada and Pujara was to grind out Bengal and the means to it was a heads-down-graft-hard approach.
Vasavada, 31, has slowly grown to be a man Saurashtra can trust. He is a good fielder, decent left-arm spinner, and his batting has made him a valuable team man.
In the stands, Arvind the coach recalled the numerous occasions Pujara and Vasavada used to produce unbeaten knocks in district games for Rajkot Rural. And when the two boys played, the team always won the championship.
In the here and now, Bengal tested the pair with specific plans. They hurled a lot of short balls at Pujara and tried to lure Vasavada to feel for balls in the outside-the-off-stump corridor. Neither obliged.
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“They will not get tempted easily,” Arvind says with a lovely smile. He then proceeded to unpack the Pujara method that one has grown accustomed to. “Over the years, the basic trait I made them learn was to lay a price on their wicket. Take your time. Wait for loose balls – cricket is played in sessions,” says Arvindbhai, who used to roll the ball to the pre-teen Cheteshwar as he felt one-bounce throwdowns could trigger cross-batted urges in a kid.
The focus was on Pujara in the morning of the second day as he had retired hurt on 5 on Monday after feeling feverish. It slowly moved to an assured Vasavada, 29 overnight, and how both put their heads down and grafted. It could be termed boring, but was very effective.
Right through his 287-ball effort, Vasavada treated each ball on merit as demanded by the surface and defended compactly. The clarity of thought came through against the seamers as he never tried to do anything extraordinary. When it was straight and on a length, he defended, didn’t push out outside off, and only when it was on a driveable length, really full, did he drive.
Vasavada used his feet a lot to the spinners, constantly rushing out to blunt, push or drive. Slow spin didn’t trouble him as the shot he chose to bring up his hundred showed. It had turned in to the left-hander who shuffled outside leg, stayed beside the ball that kept turning towards him, and manipulated it through the gap at cover point that he had eyed from the moment he saw the ball drop just back of a length.
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Pujara was very cautious through his 66-run knock, a strike rate of 27.85 as compared to Vasavada’s 36.93. Blunt, defend, tap, leave, defend was how he went, determined as he was to haul Saurashtra past 400 and heap pressure on Bengal.
Bengal tried everything. At one stage, they had left-arm spinner Shahbaz Ahmed attempt some purchase from the bowling marks and tried varying his loop. Nothing worked. Even frequent appeals for remote lbw chances were tried.
The medium-pacers used bouncers consistently in the second session but neither Pujara nor Vasavada attempted to pull, choosing to duck.
Vasavada’s father Vyomeshbhai, a railway clerk and cricket fan in awe of Clive Lloyd’s imperious West Indies team, had always wanted his son to become a professional cricketer. He asked his friend Arvind to coach an 11-year old Arpit along with Cheteshwar and kickstarted a dream.
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Arvindbhai’s batting ethos was reflected in the pair’s batting on Tuesday. They concentrated more on singles, didn’t try to manufacture shots. By the time Vasavada was dismissed, stumped while trying to stretch forward in defence, he had hit only 11 fours. Pujara fell soon after when he was trapped lbw by seamer Mukesh Kumar. Pujara had expected the length delivery around the off-stump to tilt in more than it did; in fact, it had straightened a touch to move past the outside edge of the bat and ping the back pad in front of off-stump. Pujara, who had hurriedly shimmied away outside off, went for the DRS, suggesting to his partner his hope that the ball perhaps cut away a lot more and would have missed off. The replays stubbed out that hope and Kumar nailed Prerak Mankad lbw as well.
Bengal had some good news about the fitness of their batsman-for-crisis Anustup Majumdar, who had his fingers jammed on the first day while attempting a catch. However, they would have to remove the stubborn pair of Jain and Jadeja first.
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