Abhimanyu Easwaran and the old school test batsmanship

Abhimanyu Easwaran has scored more than 7500 first class runs since making his debut for West Bengal in 2013. It includes twenty six centuries so far and his average is just a shade under 50. In his past 5 outings, he scored three centuries ( including a 191 for the Rest of India side against the Ranji Trophy champions Mumbai in the Irani Cup) and a double century.

His solid style of batting coupled with dedication, hardwork and patience brought him to the limelight but the international debut has eluded him for at least three successive seasons now. Yashasvi Jaiswal has cemented his opening slot already with a series of consistent and attacking performances. The other opener being the captain Rohit Sharma, youngsters like Easwaran would need to wait. After the WTC finals next year, the selectors and Rohit Sharma would definitely take a call on the future and most likely draft in a few new faces into the side. Easwaran if he manages to remain hopeful and in form, appears to be the first choice opener unless the think tank decides to overlook his performances and pick Devdutt Padikkal among others.

Easwaran would form an ideal combination with Jaiswal. The differences between them start with their batting styles- Easwaran being right handed. He belongs to the old school category and unlike Jaiswal rarely attacks from the word go. He learnt the basics of the game from The Abhimanyu Cricket academy, started by his father who wanted to be a cricketer himself. Despite scoring heavily in domestic cricket, he has been overlooked for close to 3 seasons now - because of the plethora of options in India, this has been the case for at least 3 generations and there would be a handful of deserving players missing out.

Easwaran has waged quite a few lone battles for Bengal and generally sweats it out. With Cheteshwar Pujara out of the reckoning, there appears to be no traditional test batsman in the current squad - Virat Kohli would come closest to be called a proper test batsman and though the others have a good defensive technique, the effect of modern day cricket is seen in their batting styles. Considering that Jaiswal, Kohli, KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant are certainties for a few more years, India would have atleast 2 top order slots to fill in the next one year. Shubham Gill, Padikkal, Sarfraz Khan and the T20 skipper SuryaKumar Yadav would be vying to fill these slots and Gill would most certainly make it to the final eleven as number 3.

If Sarfraz or Suryakumar is preferred, Gill would be promoted to the opener's slot where he has done well already. Easwaran will then have to bide his time again and wait for an opportunity. Recently even the former India captain Sourav Ganguly remarked that Easwaran and Sarfraz Khan need to be selected to play for India at the highest level. He is 29 years old now which is not too late for a batsman but considering his ability to grind it out and play knocks similar to what Pujara managed against Australia in the historic test series in 2020-21, he would most certainly serve Indian cricket for years if picked now. With the modern game demanding accelerated scoring at will like what India did against Bangladesh in the second test at Kanpur, Easwaran can work on adding a few more shots to his repertoire to create more headaches for the selectors.