Ind vs Bangladesh, 2nd Test – Rohit Sharma and the sixes that woke up a dead game

Test cricket has been around for so long that some things just can’t be known. Did Bradman sleep with a stick by his bed? Did WG floss after brushing? Has Imran taken classes on the psychology of cornered tigers? Did the Nawab of Pataudi have morning breath?

The importance of a batsman hitting the first two balls he faces for six is ​​somewhere outlandish in this case. History, as far as possible, suggests that four people did it.

Foffie Williams is famous, even though it happened back in 1948, because he was a fast bowler and it was very out of character. The remaining robbers are of a newer vintage and therefore data on them is much more readily available. Sachin Tendulkar took a liking to Nathan Lyon in 2013 and Umesh Yadav couldn’t resist George Linde in 2019. Each of them was a spur-of-the-moment attack.

“I don’t think as a bowling team they (Bangladesh) expected this to happen. But part of our game plan was always to see, OK, how can we move this game forward? And how can we get the result? ” said bowling coach Morne Morkel.

India need five wins to feel safe in next year’s World Test Championship final. They have five tests at home. Packing them before leaving for Australia would be a huge burden for them. However, the weather in Kanpur and the drainage in Green Park are not conducive to these ideas. If India dreamed of going Down Under and playing the Border-Gavaskar series in the wild, they had to do something drastic.

And so it happened. Even before they started hitting. With Rohit once again the initiator.

Litton Das played some brilliant knocks on both sides of the wicket without taking any risks. So the Indian captain took out two of his slips and placed them right in front of the batsman. One at short mid-wicket, the other at stupid mid-wicket. Now Litton couldn’t make his runs, playing check drives in which his hands never strayed very far from his body. Now he had to do something else. He had to open himself up to risk.

The one he took tried to clear the center of the attack. And Rohit was there. He jumped into the air. He stretched one arm up and fell with the ball, his smile requiring much more space than he had available. The flaw was corrected quickly enough when his teammates joined him. His smile spread to them, and their smiles spread to the approximately 20,000 spectators watching the stadium. During the ceremony, Shubman Gill played the hook. Rohit recreated it himself when he came back at half-time for a new batsman. It was a moment of fun he allowed himself before he went back to work.

There was a moment when Shakib Al Hasan, tired of what was happening, tried to get his captain’s attention to suggest a change of field, but Najmul Hossain Shanto must have had too much on his mind to notice. In the end, Shakib simply gave up and was forced to wait until the end to convey his message.

While struggling in Bangladesh, Jaiswal helped himself to 72 runs off 51 balls. Virat Kohli had an innings where his control percentage dipped in the mid-60s, but his strike rate rose to 130 thanks to his willingness to try shots as exotic as the standing reverse shot, all the way to deep third. Every time he plays in this format, KL Rahul forgot to look like he was having an existential crisis and scored a fifty in 33 balls. India took the lead within three hours.

“It was a collective support of the batting group and that is important,” Morkel said. “Also from GG’s point of view, we decided to see if we can push the game forward as quickly as possible, and for that we need a leader at the front. Rohit has done this many times for India and today again go first ball, hit six, you know, on a surface you think the bounce might be up and down, you’re not quite sure how the new ball will play, just after to leave a trace behind…

India reached 50 in 18 balls, 100 in 61 balls, 200 in 148 balls and 250 in 183 balls. Each of them was a Test match record and a common plan. The enormity of our game (largely unknown) and the strangeness of it (so much of it was lost in the margins) collided when Rohit attacked.