After reaching his hundred, Rachin Ravindra let the moment sink in. He took a pause, a deep breath, watched the ball dribble to the boundary, and then, as though in a state of trance, removed his helmet, curled his fists and let out a roar of joy. In the stands, his relatives and cousins leapt ecstatically, the crowd, keeping aside their loyalties, applauded him as one of their own. Immune to all, he stood still.
Multiple narratives ran through his milestone moment. It steered New Zealand past a rocky path in the first session, when a self-destructive streak had seized them, to a total of 402, where they could realistically dream of winning their first Test in 36 years in these shores; it reasserted his stakes as one of the new-generation’s premier batsmen; it captured the story of a son achieving his father Ravi Krishnamurthy’s unfulfilled cricketing dream in his hometown, and how the indifferent crowd shed their affiliations, and embraced him as one of their own.
It was a day of several threads of a plot knitted to produce a fascinating story.
Foremost, though, was the coronation of Rachin, the batsman, as a prospective heir to the next golden generation of batsmen. This was only his 19th outing in Tests, but he exhibited a galaxy of virtues that foretells a long and decorated career. He kept away the contagious self-harming bug that had affected his fellow batsmen. From 180 for 3, New Zealand slipped to 223 for 7. India’s seamers revved up the intensity. On a flat surface, New Zealand were on the verge of squandering their hard-earned advantage in an hour of reckless batting.
But in the mayhem, he offered calm and peace, an assurance that he would guide them to the shores of safety. He hardly played a shot in hurry, he barely let panic kick in, he injected into the mind of India’s bowlers a sense of pessimism that he is impregnable. In the seasoned Tim Southee, he found a defiant support cast too. He trusted Southee, a lower-order hand with a six-fetish, so much so that he didn’t try to protect him by taking singles off the last ball or refusing them early on in the over.
Order restored, he unleashed chaos. To the seamers, he was watchful and restrained, stroking four only when he met bad balls. One of them was a gorgeous straight drive off Mohammed Siraj. But when the spinners ambled in, he dialled his attacking game. Few non-Asian batsmen, with the exception of Joe Root and Steve Smith, have looked as comfortable as him in not only nullifying the spinners but also bossing them.
Test century number two for Rachin Ravindra!
It comes from 124 balls with 11 fours and 2 sixes. Pushing the team towards a big lead in Bengaluru. Follow play LIVE in NZ on @skysportnz or @SENZ_Radio LIVE scoring | https://t.co/yADjMlJjpO 📲 #INDvNZ #CricketNation 📸 BCCI pic.twitter.com/rshaKAYyDI
— BLACKCAPS (@BLACKCAPS) October 18, 2024
The pitch had not yet begun to throw tantrums, but India’s spin trifecta is guileful enough to take the pitch out of the equation. He swept with remarkable freedom — Ravi Ashwin was fetched over mid-wicket with not so much as heave as a caress. Unlike some of the colleagues, the sweep was not a premeditated tool to throw the spinners’ length off-kilter, but a genuine weapon of destruction. He didn’t manufacture the sweep, but swept only when the ball was there to be swept. Ravi Jadeja was deftly late-cut, using his limber wrists, before he was lashed through covers. The wrists whirred when he pulled Ashwin, dragging the short-of-length ball from outside the off-stump.
To Kuldeep, who flighted the ball more generously, he stepped out and popped him either down the ground or through long-on. Post hundred, he accelerated and illustrated his full range. In a three-over burst, he and Southee shellacked 48 runs. Rather than Matthew Hayden, he was like a left-handed Root, in his ability to judge the lengths and glide the ball to the gaps.
Ingrained in muscle memory
Playing spin seemed an ingrained muscle memory rather than an acquired skill. His footwork was slick—either he went fully back, or totally forward. He seldom stabbed at the ball and took calculated gambles to dishevel the spinners’ length. He read Ashwin, foiling his bluffs and snares. He was reaping the fruits for the labour of chiselling his spin game over the years. In June, he was at the Chennai Super Kings High Performance centre to prepare for the tour. The emphasis was to hold the shape for longer in the lower positions, like how Asian batsmen do. Overseas batsmen tend to hurry through their strokes, like the sweep and slog-sweeps.
For Rachin Ravindra, Playing spin seemed an ingrained muscle memory rather than an acquired skill. (PTI)
“As cricketers from the western side of the world, we’re still trying to incorporate that into our spin games. It’s about having an open mind to all that and stuff, but it’s also still important for us to remember what we do well as a team and players. It’s about being able to take bits from the experiences we’ve had and ultimately back ourselves and trust our plan,” he would say.
He also benefitted from the trips to the Rural Development Trust Stadium in Anantapur, 200-odd kilometres from Bangalore where he spent hours batting on cracked pitches to finesse his spin-game. Remembers KS Shahabuddin, a former fast bowler for Andhra and a coach: “He used to make us prepare pitches with varying degrees of turn and deterioration. Some pitches with cracks and low bounce, some with red soil, some with black. And he used to practise throughout the day, despite the heat. He was a workaholic.”
Gradually, he won over the crowd too. Apart from a few CSK fans in the stands, he didn’t enthuse them much. After all, he was the one who went away (though it was his father, a software engineer who migrated to Wellington, and not him). But as his knock grew magnificently they binned their coldness and warmed up to his stroke-making. So much so that, in the end, he walked off as one of their own.
