Today’s blog will be a bit different from others because I rarely dedicate my blogs to discussing the technicalities of the game. So I feel this is the high time to do it and this blog will be a bit special for me because I will try to put all my experience into writing this and make you guys an educated cricket fan. Yes, today we will talk about the Indian Cricket team opening pair, Rohit Sharma and K.L.Rahul. Before the start of the series, everyone had their doubts about how Indian opening duo will perform as in previous blogs I had mentioned several times that in SENA countries the opening Partnership is so important and it lays the foundation for other batsmen to make runs and it makes the batting bit easier for middle-order batsmen because no batsmen want to play in the situation where the team is down by 2-3 wickets in first 10-20 overs and last 10 years India has suffered a lot in SENA countries as they have not managed to put a 100 run opening partnership. The last 100 run opening partnership comes outside India was in 2010 when Gambhir and Sehwag used to open for Team India in Centurion against South Africa. And in the last 9 innings, we have put five 50 plus partnerships which is just extraordinary seeing the previous records. So in this blog, I will talk about what Indian openers are doing special. Especially we will throw some light on the last 3 innings of K.L.Rahul and Rohit Sharma’s partnership.
The first and foremost thing is when we play in SENA countries it is important to play the ball under the eyes, it means you are inviting the ball to come close to your body and when you play balls which are closed to your body and under the eyes, a batsman is in more control because his body weight will be more correct, their head position will be right and he is not throwing his bat towards the ball and which decreases the chance of edges and in England where ball seam and swings it is important to play close to the body, so you are in more control and you are certainly decreasing the chances of getting out. And in both Rohit Sharma showed this thing yesterday as in first 40 balls he hardly got balls which were close to his body and England pacers are inviting him to play those cover drives or cuts but he waited patiently and when Sam Curran comes to bowling he bowled some balls towards Rohit Sharma body and what he did ,he smashed them for four runs.
The second thing in which both Rohit Sharma and Rahul are doing very well is they know where is their off-stump, in a test match when you know where is your off-stump it becomes comparatively easy to play and leave the ball. Because when balls are on those 4th or 5th stump length so when batsman knows where his off-stump is it is easy to analyze which bowl he has to play and which he needs to left and in this series, both batsmen have done this thing quite well as in first innings of first test-match Rahul almost left 50% bowls in the starting of the innings and even Rohit Sharma when balls bowled at that corridor of uncertainty he knows which bowls he has to leave and which bowl he has to put his bat on but because his bat was close to the body so whenever he got beaten he doesn’t look awful or you can say he left the ball well because in England any player whatever his/her pedigree is, they will surely suffer because of the condition but it is important to know whether the ball was good or you have thrown your bat and doing suicide but here both batsmen showed absolute patience which was remarkable.
The third thing which I feel Rahul Dravid was a Picasso of that thing is playing the ball with soft hands. It becomes vital for the teams or the Batsmen to play with the soft hands in seaming conditions. Why does a player need to play with soft hands? Here is a simple logic when you play with the soft hands you just take the pace out of the ball and even if it takes the edge of your bat, it will not carry to the slip or the wicket-keeper. And K.L.Rahul has improved this thing so much like in 2018 when he suffered against England so much what he was doing he was playing with hard hands when you play with hard hands you are giving the ball more pace and speed so it will easily carry to the wicketkeeper or the slip cordon. And like in yesterday innings or even in first match innings where he scored 84 runs the ball has taken so many edges but just because his hands were so soft, so it is just dropped in front of the slip fielders.
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Sportsoff 