India has coped with the lack of a settled opening pair, put up reasonable totals on the scoreboard and won seven of the 10 Tests it has played this calendar year.
While England struggled for four years to find an opening partner for its captain Alastair Cook, after the retirement of Andrew Strauss, India has suffered this year, with five sets of openers going to bat against the West Indies, New Zealand and England.
Hopefully the home team would be in better shape as regards its opening batsmen when Australia arrives for a four-Test series next year.
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The last few months has seen India rely upon the three main openers in M. Vijay, K.L. Rahul and Shikhar Dhawan and bringing in old hands, Gautam Gambhir and Parthiv Patel as replacements.
The right-left combination seemed to be working well with Vijay and Dhawan hitting their straps with a 283-run stand against Bangladesh at Fatullah in June 2015. Since, there has been a considerable drop in form; and this has been noticeable in the home Test series this year. India has seen the following pairs open the innings; Vijay-Rahul, Rahul-Dhawan, Vijay-Dhawan, Vijay-Gambhir and Vijay-Parthiv.
On Tuesday, India’s head coach Anil Kumble was quite practical in assessing the situation and said: “Ideally yes, you would want a settled opening pair, but I think under the circumstances we have done really well.
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“The injuries are not in our control; injuries are part and parcel of the game. Unfortunately, Rahul got hit while he was fielding in Visakhapatnam and that is how he got the injury. Parthiv came in the last game and did a fantastic job at the top. I am sure Rahul will have a hit today and he will be fine; let’s see how it goes.
“For New Zealand, we had three different opening pairs, even in the West Indies we had an injury to Vijay and then Shikhar got injured against New Zealand. Then Gautam had that freak injury in Indore, but he could bat. So I think there is something happening with the openers in terms of injury, I hope that doesn’t go on. There has to be some stop at some stage.”
While Cook is most likely to open with left-hander Keaton Jennings (the England captain’s 11th opening partner in four years), Rahul will walk out with Vijay on Thursday.
After his 108 against Australia at Sydney almost two years ago, the Karnataka player scored 108 against Sri Lanka last year and 158 against the West Indies at Kingston in July 2016.
Rahul has truly raised hopes of establishing permanency and with seven more home Tests to be played (two against England, one against Bangladesh and four against Australia), he will have plenty of opportunities.
Rahul, after a hamstring concern during the third Test against New Zealand at Indore, returned for the second Test against England at Visakhapatnam, but the shoulder injury he suffered ruled him out of the third Test at Mohali.
Rahul was the first to face throw-downs at India’s first practice session after a six-day break and Kumble gave sufficient hints that he would be back at the opener’s slot.
After a superb century in the first innings of the Rajkot Test, Vijay has been on a downhill with scores of 31, 20, 3, 12, 0.
Offering his views on the Tamil Nadu opener’s sudden dip in form, Kumble said: “Vijay has been the most consistent batsman over the last couple of years. He started off the series very well with a hundred in Rajkot and he has got out to similar kind of deliveries (short) which is something probably you can pinpoint as his weakness. But I don’t think that’s fair. He is someone who we certainly believe will come up with a big score. So we certainly believe that it is just round the corner.’’
India’s highest opening stand this year has come from Rahul and Dhawan; they put on 87 against the West Indies at Kingston. There has been six partnerships under 30 runs; clearly India is in a plight and it will be looking to set this right sooner than later.