Assured batting at the top of the order is in short supply in Indian cricket at the moment. India‘s Test team batting seems to be all about Virat Kohli with the rest of the line-up struggling to come close to him even collectively.
Cheteshwar Pujara, long seen as one of the most solid red-ball batsmen in the country, is now surplus to the team’s needs while those who had been backed to do well – like Murali Vijay and Ajinkya Rahane – looked like a shadow of their former self in the first Test against England in Birmingham.
India’s batting is a serious headache at the moment as after a long time, they have the bowling to take 20 wickets cheaply on any surface that promises a result. Captain Kohli is batting on a different plane, scoring 200 himself at Edgbaston while their rest of the players accounted for 214.
The unimpressive technique of opener Shikhar Dhawan and the indifferent batting of KL Rahul means India are struggling. And as they look for a way to stop the bleeding, they should at least consider the next best options – Prithvi Shaw and Mayank Agarwal.
The two batsmen are not part of the Test squad for the first three Tests and instead are fighting it out for the India ‘A’ team. Opener Shaw, who captained the Indian team to the Under-19 World Cup title earlier in the year, cracked 136 against South Africa ‘A’ in the ongoing unofficial Test in Bengaluru while adding 277 for the opening stand with Agarwal who himself scored a majestic 220.
Shaw has taken his tally to seven centuries in just 13 first-class matches with five fifties and already averages more than 57 since his debut last year. Agarwal, on the other hand, has now scored four centuries in his last eight matches – which include List A matches in England. Also, Agarwal finished the 2017-18 domestic season in India with 2,141 runs for his state Karnataka.
With India’s batting, apart from Kohli, looking clueless in English conditions, maybe it’s time to have a look at one of these two or both as top-ranked India can’t afford to see the same players fail over and over again.