Should a slot be found for Suryakumar Yadav in India’s Test team that will take on Australia in four Tests next month? It is not always wise to rush a T20 specialist, however exceptional, into five-day cricket based purely on his exploits in the shortest format. But that alone is not the argument for including Yadav in the first couple of Tests at least.
This is a mature player of 32, with 79 first class matches under his belt, over 5500 runs and an average of nearly 45. He has 14 centuries. Most batters with that record would be looking for a Test debut. Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant, to take two examples from the Indian team, haven’t played as much first class cricket as Yadav.
There is too the example of Australia’s David Warner who came into Test cricket via T20, and has become one of its most enduring performers with over a hundred Tests, scoring both a triple century and a century before lunch on the first day of a Test match.
Stunning form
The time to pick a player is when he is in form, and Suryakumar has been in stunning form in recent months, extending the boundaries of the possible in T20 cricket, where, of course he is, like all batters, allowed a certain amount of irresponsibility.
Test cricket is a different animal altogether. At a time when India’s middle order appears less than perfect, someone who can shake up things, throw bowlers off their length should be welcomed. For it is not just the innovative shots Yadav plays in T20 that make the difference. There are two important elements that he has in common with aggressive players like Virender Sehwag and Rishabh Pant.
Tracer-bullet batting
One is his map-reading gift, the ability to absorb at any given moment precisely where the gaps in the field are. The other is his ball sense and timing which sends the ball screaming from the bat. It is tracer-bullet batsmanship, to borrow a phrase from Ravi Shastri. These qualities mean he does not need to descend into muscular hitting with heavy bats.
Indian selectors tend to be conservative, believing, for example, that a dismissal off a defensive shot is somehow superior (for want of a better word) to a dismissal off an attacking shot. They have often argued in their minds that aggressive batters should have a second string to their bow. In recent years, Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Pant kept wickets, Kapil Dev opened the bowling. Sehwag was the exception, but even he had 40 wickets in Tests.
Every team should encourage a batsman who can change a game in a session, and despite the experience of T20 cricket, there aren’t too many in Test cricket who can actually do that.
When there were misgivings about Pant in the initial matches, the coach persisted with him, recognising that he was special and needed to be nurtured. Outside of his 33 Tests, Pant has played just 14 first class games, but already has five centuries and six fifties in Tests. After his horrific accident, it is too early to say when he will return to international cricket, and Yadav would make a difference.
Feel for the ball
His experience will tell him that he cannot play Tests like he does T20, but he has such a lovely feel for the ball (he has spoken about how he knows he is batting well by the sound of the ball on the bat) that the adjustment cannot be a problem.
He has admitted to occasionally playing pre-determined shots. That is anathema to Test batsmanship. He knows he cannot do that in Tests, but on the other hand, he might be able to make it work there. Cricket is a huge university that welcomes all philosophies, and players take a special joy (as to spectators) in proving the hard-and-fast rules wrong!
His excellence in T20 cricket shouldn’t work against his playing Test cricket; that would be both unfair to him and a loss to Indian cricket.
As England have been demonstrating recently, there is more than one way to approach Test cricket. Players gain confidence with the backing of the coach and captain, and Yadav has done enough to merit such backing this season. After all, he made his Ranji debut 13 years ago, and is no callow youngster likely to be carried away by others’ expectations.