At 161-5, India were feeling the heat. Shoaib Bashir had just accounted for Yashasvi Jaiswal and the home team’s batting reserves on a spiteful Ranchi pitch was down to its last recognised pair, Sarfaraz Khan and Dhruv Jurel. Both were playing their second Test and under pressure, Sarfaraz was looking a tad tentative. He perished soon, to Tom Hartley, with India going deeper in the mire.
From his stint at the IPL, Ben Stokes knows a lot about the young Indian batters, their shot-making preferences. He has an idea about Jurel’s knack of playing lofted drives against the spinners. The England captain kept mid-on and mid-wicket up and invited the Indian youngster to go over the top against Bashir. Normally, it’s a risky ploy, for Jurel would be playing with the turn and Bashir is not a prodigious turner of the red ball. But the pitch was very slow with uneven bounce and there was every chance of a mishit. Jurel, though, took up the challenge and lofted the off-spinner down the ground for a four.
A few overs later, he charged down the track and hit Bashir over long-off for a six. It was smart, proactive batting. Jurel was picking the length early and he refused to be bogged down by the situation, or the fact that the England offie was on a roll.
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On his Test debut in Rajkot, while scoring a 104-ball 46 in the first innings, the wicketkeeper-batter had given a good account of himself. In Ranchi, though, the situation was entirely different. Here, the pitch had been facilitating a wicket-ball every now and then, and after the hosts slumped to 177-7, Jurel had to bat with the tail. He showed very little nerves and played every ball on its merit, on his way to a 76-run eighth wicket partnership with Kuldeep Yadav – he showed real grit – that took India’s score closer to England’s first innings total. Someone who is basically a stroke-player, Jurel had to change his game, which he did with aplomb. But he was ready to pounce on anything even slightly loose. When Hartley bowled a fraction short, Jurel emphatically pulled it to the wide long-on boundary.
Sometimes, batters tend to lose focus while starting afresh on a new day. Given India’s situation, Jurel, though, couldn’t afford any slip-up. The way he batted in the morning session of the third day, Sunday, spoke volumes for his maturity. He read the game well, he was organised at the crease and very assuredly reached his maiden half-century in Test cricket. Eventually, he ran out of partners and perished as the last batter for 90 off 149 balls. It was an outstanding innings that has kept his side in the game.
Tough situations separate the men from the boys and Jurel showed that the Indian team management took the right call by throwing him in at the deep end, in place of KS Bharat.
The 23-year-old is a fighter. It is in his blood. His father, Nem Chand, is an ex-Armyman and he wanted his son to graduate from the National Defence Academy. But Jurel loved cricket and was ready to fight. At 13 years of age, he travelled alone from Agra to Noida to get himself enrolled in a cricket academy. He didn’t have money and his mother reportedly had to mortgage her gold jewellery to get her son his first cricket kit. Adversity brings the best out of the youngster. In the Ranji Trophy also, while turning up for Uttar Pradesh, Jurel has played several crucial knocks when his team was under the pump. With India under serious pressure in Ranchi, the newcomer was sort of relishing the situation.
In a few months’ time, Rishabh Pant is expected to return to the Indian team fold and he will walk into the side. But Jurel has already made an impression, good enough to become Pant’s understudy. As for his wicketkeeping, he was pretty good against fast bowling in his maiden Test but struggled a bit against spin, Kuldeep in particular. The Ranchi Test has been witnessing a quick improvement. The catch to dismiss Ollie Robinson off Ravindra Jadeja was an excellent one, especially for the fact that the batter was reverse-sweeping.
Overall, on the second day of the match, Jurel’s glovework drew praise from several quarters, including Partiv Patel. “appreciation post for DHRUV JUREL…he has been brilliant behind the stumps,” the former India stumper wrote on X.
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