India Struggles To Replace Pujara At 3 In Tests: Karun Nair’s return to the Indian Cricket Team after an eight-year absence was one of the biggest narratives going into the ongoing England vs India five-Test Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy series. In the second match of this series, Nair, who is one of only two Indian triple-centurions, was promoted to No. 3 in the batting order.
Until 2022, the No. 3 spot in the dominant Indian Test side was held down by Cheteshwar Pujara. In an age of accelerated scoring in the longest format of the sport, Pujara was cautious and monk-like in his approach. Known for hogging one end of the pitch, playing long innings, and scoring slow runs, the 37-year-old was the perfect counterpart to the attacking Indian batting in red-ball cricket.
However, after 2022, well, during the 2021-23 World Test Championship cycle, the Saurashtra batter was being phased out of the national team. He batted at his regular number in the home series against Australia in the first half of 2023. While he played as an opener in the one-off Test against England in 2022, he was still seen as the designated one-down batter.
India Struggles To Replace Pujara At 3 In Tests
He played in that very position in the WTC final against the Aussies in June 2023. But his poor performance in that game was seen as an excuse to oust the then 35-year-old from the Test team. That WTC final would end up being Pujara’s last match for the Men in Blue.
In the series against the West Indies immediately after, India found what looked like a new stable top four. Yashasvi Jaiswal would open batting with captain Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli would play at his regular place at two-down, and Gill would bat at No. 3. That series was played with this being India’s top order. Although Shubman did not do well in a series that India won 1-0.
Gill would continue batting at this position on the 2023-24 tour to South Africa as well, failing to score big runs there too. In the first of two Tests against Bangladesh later that year, the youngster scored his first ton at No. 3 for India in Tests. However, things changed when New Zealand toured for three Tests and defeated India at home in a series for the first time.
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Shubman batted well in the first inning of the first match but then returned to his underwhelming self (at No. 3) in the following game. Gill missed the third match as Kohli took his spot, the second man to try the No. 3 place after Pujara left the team.
At this point, the ‘Shubman Gill at No.3 in Tests’ experiment had failed. So, in the first match of the 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy, coach Gautam Gambhir tried putting Devdutt Padikkal in that place. And to barely anyone’s surprise, he did not do well. As Rohit pushed himself to sixth, Gill returned to the one-down spot in the second Test and failed to score big as well. The story was the same in the third Test as well.
After suffering a fractured finger, Gill was out of the team, so captain Rohit Sharma came out to open and put KL Rahul in the No. 3 spot. Rahul, who was one of India’s better batters throughout the series, failed at three as well. So then in the fifth and final Test, the returning Gill, whose Test average had been ruined by batting at a spot he wasn’t the best for, returned to No. 3 and failed to score big yet again.
Now we arrive at the ongoing Test series against England. Shubman Gill, now the captain of the Test team, reasonably decided not to bat at three. In the first match of this series at Headingley, this ‘honour’ went to the debuting Sai Sudharsan. Debuting at No. 3 for an Asian opener doesn’t go well often. Sai, despite showing promise and getting good starts, failed to convert them into big scores.
So, in a surprising move, Sudharsan was dropped from the squad for the second match, and Karun Nair, who too did not have the best outing in the first Test at No. 6, was put at three, crossed the 20-run mark in both innings, but did not make big runs. This made Nair the sixth man to bat at No. 3 for the Indian Cricket Team in Tests after Cheteshwar Pujara’s last game.
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