Enter Pant, and all of a sudden Taijul is bowling with a long-on and deep midwicket even before Pant had faced a ball. Even before Pant does anything audacious – in fact he is 6 off 14 – Taijul is bowling round the wicket to him. Pant now does audacious things, sweeping a full ball between the keeper and backward short leg, skipping out and hitting a six, just bending his upper body back to create a short length and pulling a four.
Pant might have doubters in limited-overs formats but he has been India’s best batter in Tests for a while. Once again, promoted to No. 5 to disrupt the bowlers’ rhythm, Pant does what needs to be done when it seems like Bangladesh are good at sealing conventional avenues of scoring for India’s top order.
At the non-striker’s end is the familiar sight of Pujara with whom he has now spent 1184 balls in the middle in just 10 partnerships. That’s nearly 20 overs on average that the two bat together. It is one of the more fascinating partnerships in world cricket. Pujara can make you feel a mere good ball is not enough to get him out; Pant can hit mere good balls to any part of the field. It can’t be easy for bowlers to adjust to these two extremes.
Pujara might be the last of his kind: a batter who takes defence to its extremes in a world full of fitter bowlers and deeper attacks. More and more batters and teams feel it is just not possible to wait to tire the bowlers before you take the runs you have earned. And yet there he is, making yet another comeback to the side, doing what he knows, just with renewed bloody-mindedness. Good balls out, soft hands when playing outside off, dancing shoes on but just to defend.
“Pujara has often said he gets access to bad balls because of Pant’s presence with him. Pant can also be sure he doesn’t need to curb his aggression, which a fall of wicket at the other end can force him to do”
You can imagine Pujara probably feels Pant can do so much more with the natural stroke-making ability he has. Similarly Pant probably feels baffled at Pujara’s insistence on properly grinding down the bowlers before taking them on. Yet, they enjoy batting with each other because India enjoy that partnership. Five of their 10 partnerships have started at 102 or lower. On each of those occasions, they have helped India out of the jam.
By the time they are separated here, India have seen off the dangerous period. They end the first day of their Test season in ascendency. A season in which they can’t afford more than the odd slip-up if they are to make it to the WTC final. It might be safe to say that if India fail to make it there, some team will have found a way past this partnership between two of modern Test cricket’s oddballs. And that is not a gratuitous attempt to suffix “ball” to come up with a name for the way Pant-Pujara play
