Shikhar Dhawan made his ODI and Test debuts against the same opponents, Australia- albeit 2.5 years apart. In his ODI debut, he faced all of 2 balls and was bowled of the second ball he faced for a duck. Call it coincidence, but it was a game in which Michael Clarke scored a wonderful hundred (well, here’s another: Clarke got out for a duck in this game, while Dhawan eventually racked up the fastest ton on debut in the history of Test cricket!).
Today, when Dhawan went out to open the innings for the first time in a Test match, he may have well wondered if misfortune had cast her evil eye on him again. He was caught out of the crease, backing up too much at the non-striker’s end, when the ball accidentally fell on the stumps and dislodged the bails. Thankfully, for everyone who managed to watch the innings that followed (except for the visiting players and their traveling supporters), the Australians just let that incident be and moved on…. to be completely blown away by some amazingly dazzling strokeplay. The Aussie bowlers and fielders gave it their all– their commitment on the field was admirable, but towards the end of the day’s play, a look of helplessness took over; heads fell over in near-surrender as eyes followed the ball that inevitably raced past them with unbelievable frequency. A hundred in a session of play between lunch and tea, and a near double hundred within the end of the next session– that certainly belongs to the the rarest of the rare occasions.
If Dhawan is able to reproduce an innings even half as good in quality of strokeplay in future, he would have earned the right to twirl his moustache with pride!
P.S: On air, Sunil Gavaskar was tongue-in-cheek as usual poking fun at the tendency of Australians and Englishmen to focus on the Ashes even as they are playing test series elsewhere in the world. He kept emphasising the need for them to focus on the present. Fair point, but why do Indian commentators (Mr.Gavaskar is as guilty of this as anyone else) want to talk about a batsman getting double hundreds and triple hundreds even as they reach a hundred or a double hundred, respectively?