A Tale Of The Tail!

It’s a dead-heat between Adam Gilchrist and Kapil Dev as to who was the best lower order batsman ever. And I haven’t chosen these two names as a cop-out solution. They were SIMPLY TOO GOOD, actualising their potential and setting a threshold by which future generations of players too would be judged.

- Ayaz Memon

Brilliantly as Virat Kohli, M.Vijay, Cheteshwar Pujara, K. L. Rahul and Karun Nair batted against England in the recently concluded series, the contribution of the lower order must be acknowledged. Without this, India’s wins would’t have been as emphatic. Indeed, these players frequently bailed the team out of crises.

For the record, between them Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Jayant Yadav scored a whopping 751 runs in the series. Ashwin made the most, 306, which along with his 28 wickets made it one of the most compelling all-round performances in the annals of the game.

ASHWIN HAD FOUR HALF CENTURIES from the seven innings he batted in to reiterate his batting credentials — if at all this was necessary. He had made a bagful of runs against New Zealand too in the preceding series, and two centuries before that against the West Indies.

In virtually every series since the one against Sri Lanka in 2015, Ashwin has impressed as a batsman too. This has enabled him to be Man of The Series four times out of five (Virat Kohli winning the other), and it is hardly surprising that he occupies the No. 1 spot in the all-rounders category too (apart from bowlers) in the current ICC rankings.

AGAINST ENGLAND, JADEJA was not far behind Ashwin with 224 (2 half centuries) runs and 26 wickets, while rookie Jayant Yadav, in his first international series, had 221 runs (one century, one half century) to go with his 9 wickets.

The remaining ‘specialist’ bowlers boast decent batting performances too. Bhuvaneshwar Kumar and Amit Mishra have first-class hundreds to their name, Mohammed Shami and Ishant Sharma have shown the ability to play out fairly long periods of time while Umesh Yadav can use the long handle effectively.