Going back to familiar territory, especially where one has won on the last visit and also done well on previous tours, automatically lifts one’s confidence.
That is the position in which the Indian cricket team find themselves in as they seek their first World Test Championship (WTC) final win in their second attempt.
In India’s first series of the WTC 2021-23 cycle, Virat Kohli’s men defeated England at the Oval in September 2021, the venue of the WTC final against Australia starting on June 7, by 157 runs to take a 2-1 lead.
That was the fourth and penultimate Test of the five-Test series, which was discontinued due to the pandemic. The final Test was played in 2022 as a one-off.
India owe their victory in their previous visit to the Oval in London to their current skipper Rohit Sharma, who scored 11 and 127, the eighth out of his nine Test centuries.
Sharma’s worrisome form
Sharma, who has since last year been India’s all-format captain, finds himself in a position where runs have not been coming as fluently as he’d have liked.
Predominantly a white-ball batsman, Sharma has been India’s Test opener in 22 Tests and 36 innings, averaging 52.76 with six centuries, including his career best 212, and four fifties.
However, the form of Sharma going into the all-important WTC final is something of a concern.
In the immediate past tournament in which Sharma played, the Indian Premier League (IPL), the 36-year-old from Mumbai scored only two fifties and tallied 332 runs at a pathetic average of 20.75 for Mumbai Indians.
Sharma, although he got starts, could not convert them into big scores, often falling to the trap set by the opposition.
It may not be worrisome for the Indian team as he may be middling the ball well in the nets after reaching England ahead of the key clash. But a lot depends on the start Sharma gives to the team against Australia, against whose attack he has mixed results, averaging 34.21 with three fifties and one century.
He has to be wary, too, of Australia’s ace spinner Nathan Lyon, having been dismissed by him eight times, the bowler he has fallen to most times in his Test career.
Sharma, who leaves the ball well outside the off stump, will be wary of not being tempted into going for shots early on against the likes of left-armer Mitchell Starc, captain Pat Cummins and Scott Boland in his 50th Test appearance.
In the form of his life
Sharma’s opening partner Shubman Gill is in the best form of his fledgling international career. All his seven international centuries – two in Tests, four in ODIs and one in T20Is – have come in the last 11 months.
The 23-year-old from Punjab goes into the WTC final on the back of a remarkable IPL for runners-up Gujarat Titans. Gill amassed 890 runs at 59.33 with three centuries and four fifties, all the three hundreds coming in his last five innings.
While Gill had a modest start to IPL 2023, he accelerated in the latter half in which he accumulated 515 runs in his last seven innings with three centuries and an unbeaten 94 for a whopping average of 103.00, and win the Orange Cap for the most runs.
Gill is in such supreme form that Australia will find it difficult to dislodge him easily. One bad shot and Gill could be back in the pavilion. But such has been the maturity of Gill in recent times that he has understood his strengths and learnt how to use them at the right time in every match, as assessed by his mentor at Gujarat Titans, the former India coach Gary Kirsten. after the IPL final.
Kohli on a different level, Rahane on comeback trail
Like Gill, Virat Kohli has been in tremendous form, scoring two back-to-back centuries for Royal Challengers Bangalore and striking the ball brilliantly while also playing orthodox shots keeping in mind the upcoming Test match.
While Kohli has taken his game to a different level in which he does not have to prove anything to anyone and batting in a relaxed mood, all the runs he has scored in the recent past – 639 of them at 53.25 with two centuries and six fifties for Royal Challengers Bangalore -- and the 186 majestic runs he scored in his last Test innings against Australia in Ahmedabad three months ago – and the way he scored them augurs well for the Indian team.
And the former India captain will look to improve his numbers at The Oval, where he averages only 28.17 in three Tests with a highest score of 50 on the last visit.
What can one say of Ajinkya Rahane, the 82-Test veteran? Left out of the Indian Test squad early in 2022 for lack of runs, the 34-year-old middle-order batsman is a rejuvenated man, given a new lease of life by Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his Chennai Super Kings franchise.
Rahane did himself no harm by scoring runs when the opportunity arose to bat at No. 3 for CSK. And, when the vacancy arose due to lower back injury to Shreyas Iyer, the Indian selectors went in with the experience of Rahane for the No. 5 position.
Add to it the vital contribution (13-ball 27) Rahane made in the final to help CSK win their fifth title and the Mumbaikar will go all out to excel at the Oval, where he does not have a great record.
In three Tests and six innings at the Oval, Rahane’s highest is 37 while he did not open his account in three. His average is an appalling 9.17 at The Oval, but with his new-found confidence, Rahane should make amends and play a crucial role in India’s campaign.
The bowling
The form of India’s new ball bowlers Mohammed Shami and Mohammed Siraj for their respective franchises in IPL has been encouraging and at the same time rewarding.
While Shami emerged the Purple Cap winner by taking 28 wickets for the Titans, RCB’s Siraj ended up with 19 scalps, wearing the Purple Cap briefly during the tournament.
Some of the wickets Shami and Siraj took were Test match wickets, tuning themselves well for the upcoming Aussie challenge in England.
The spin twins Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin will also be crucial in India’s bowling scheme of things, and have been among the wickets in the recent IPL. Ashwin took 14 wickets for Rajasthan Royals and Jadeja 20 for CSK.
More importantly, the Ashwin-Jadeja pair tormented the Aussies on helpful Indian pitches earlier this year, taking a combined tally of 47 wickets (Ashwin 25, Jadeja 22) in the 4-Test series India won 2-1.
On the margins
The likes of Ishan Kishan, Axar Patel, Jaydev Unadkat and Umesh Yadav also were also involved in the IPL, although with varying degrees of performance.
Kishan was Mumbai Indians’ second highest scorer with 454 runs at 30.26 with three fifties, behind Suryakumar Yadav (605 runs). Whether he will be given his maiden Test cap and keep wicket ahead of KS Bharat, who kept decently on turning Indian pitches against Australia in his maiden Test series earlier this year and who did not figure in a single IPL match for Titans this year, remains to be seen.
Unadkat (left shoulder) and Yadav (left hamstring) got injured during the IPL, robbing them of valuable match practice but recovered well to retain their places in the squad.
Unadkat played in only three matches for Lucknow Super Giants and went wicketless while Yadav played in eight matches for Kolkata Knight Riders and picked up only one wicket in the first match and returned without a wicket in his next seven.
Delhi Capitals’ Axar Patel displayed his all-round prowess (283 runs and 11 wickets) while Shardul Thakur did his bit with the ball (7 wickets) and the bat (113 runs) for Kolkata Knight Riders.
The best-prepared player
Only one player in the 18-man Indian squad (including three reserves) was not involved in the IPL, and he was getting acclimatised to the conditions in England by turning out for Sussex. The 35-year-old one-down batsman, Cheteshwar Pujara, captained Sussex in the six matches that he played from April to mid-May, scoring three centuries and a fifty.
Pujara is the best prepared Indian player for the WTC final, having stayed in the red-ball mode since India’s last Test series, the Border-Gavaskar Trophy that concluded in March.
The form of the players and their high morale will keep the No. 1 ranked Indian team in good stead. But they cannot take Australia lightly. Australia have won 7 and lost 17, including their last one in 2019, out of the 38 matches they have played at the Oval since 1880 (please check) for a success percentage of 18.42 percent. On the other hand, India won two and drew five while losing 7 others for a success percentage of 14.28.
Australia may fancy their chances more in the WTC final, but India will be the one high on confidence and on current form.
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