Indian Cricket, The Muddle Order

With Cheteshwar Pujara belying his initial promise and Rohit Sharma victim to his own aggression, the Indian Test team seem clueless on who should play where in Colombo.

- Chetan Narula

A day before the second Test against Sri Lanka in Colombo, India’s practice roster lay around on a couple of kitbags. It was an ordinary sketch board, with essential information of the order in which batsmen and bowlers would spend this pre-match practice session. Usually, the Indian team follow a set practice pattern for Tests. The openers bat together in adjacent nets, one facing a pace bowler, the other a spinner. When done, they switch around. The rest of the batting line-up follows the same protocol. Numbers three and four batsmen bat, and so on, with bowlers lining up for a hit afterwards. Even those who might not feature in the impending match get a go at the end. As such the playing eleven is easy to guess at most times.

It was the same case at the P Sara Oval stadium. Umesh Yadav batted first, practising his big shots, indicating that he had made the cut ahead of the wayward Varun Aaron. Harbhajan Singh didn’t bat either, and he didn’t play.

Cheteshwar Pujara did bat though, but together with Murali Vijay and KL Rahul, the customary position for a No 3 batsman. Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane took throw-downs, their usual pre-match ritual of not batting in the nets intact. Then Rohit Sharma batted with Stuart Binny and Wriddhiman Saha in tow. All of this was marked up clearly on that sketch board, but for once the pointers weren’t clear.

What was Rohit doing batting with Saha and Binny, if he had been earmarked by the team management to be the No 3 batsman? Did his poor form suggest that Pujara could actually be in contention come toss time?