Ranchi, February 27 (Punjab Khabarnama): As bright young stars Shubman Gill and Dhruv Jurel scampered across the pitch to seal India’s five-wicket and 3-1 series victory over England, the home team dressing room spilled onto the ground. The symbolism of the moment could not be lost. After a noon-time mini-collapse, India were tottering at 120-5 but Gill and Jurel took the team past the fourth-innings target of 192 with an unbeaten partnership of 72 runs. Not known to chase down tricky totals in pressure situations, India had recorded a rare win. And thanks was due to a bunch of cricketers in their mid-20s.
Besides underlining the triumph of the young, the 3-1 scoreline had unravelled England’s much-published aggressive brand of cricket. It was also a loud statement that India no longer needs rank turners to shore up their invulnerability at home. Captain Rohit Sharma would hint that the Indian Test team going forward will continue to see these fresh young faces.
“When I look at them, talk to them, the responses that I get from them are quite encouraging. You will see these guys playing more regularly in this format … It’s just a start for them but there is a lot of promise,” he said.
Read | In a famous series win, Shubman Gill shows growing maturity, Dhruv Jurel comes up with another invaluable knock
India hadn’t been in this positive state of mind earlier in the series. After the first Test loss in Hyderabad, they stared pensively into their future. The stars are aging and team’s MVP, Virat Kohli, was to miss the entire series. Old hands Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane have been pensioned off, the transition didn’t seem to be going well.
India seemed to be swimming through uncertain times in this format. But by the end of the fourth day here, you could see the renewed wave of energy. In Jurel, 23, they have discovered a cool head in front of the stumps and quick hands behind it. His 90 and 39 not out were priceless — these got him the Player of the Match award at the venue that is the home of his idol M S Dhoni. “A dream beyond imagination,” he would tell the broadcasters.
Beside him, during the presentation ceremony, stood Gill, 24, still spotting the same cap he wore during the chase. He was giggling like a teenager, relaxed and casual. A weight was off his shoulders this series. After struggling in the first Test, his expertise against the spinning ball questioned, he bounced back with a hundred, 91 and 52 not out, proving that his game has the flexibility to adapt and his mind has the openness and hunger to work on his technique.
In the post Kohli-Sharma era, Gill could be the torchbearer of Indian batting in the fine company of Yashaswi Jaiswal, who has scored 655 runs in this series with a Test to go. Mature beyond years, Jaiswal, 22, displayed the virtues — robust technique, alert mind, and sturdy endurance in piling two double hundreds—that could very well ensure him a long and prolific career at this level.
Another find of the series, Sarfaraz Khan, 26, with his twin half-centuries in Rajkot, showed his worth as well as the quality of batsmen filing through the ranks in domestic cricket.
In Ranchi, he compensated for the low scores with vibrant fielding at short leg. In pacer Akash Deep, the 27-year-old who had a sensational debut here, India might have found the wriggle room to rest proven match-winners Mohammed Shami and Jasprit Bumrah more often. With spinner Kuldeep Yadav, now a steelier batsman, too, the Indian spin consortium has an unbreakable aura.
The other heartening aspect of this series were the pitches that weren’t the devilish turner that England got in 2021. Approval came from the England captain Ben Stokes: “I have to say all four pitches were fantastic.”
Rohit would call this a special series. “It has been a very hard-fought series without a doubt and to come on the right side of it at the end of four Test matches feels really good. We had different challenges in different Test matches and I thought we were quite composed in what we wanted to achieve and what we wanted to do on the field,” he said.
Years later, several of the young cricketers could look back and say that this was the series that made them. And Stokes would wonder how they missed the chance to breach the final frontier that has weathered many an onslaught.
