MUMBAI: In a cricket team there are phases when everything falls into place. For India the best example is when Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Virender Sehwag and Sourav Ganguly formed the batting line-up. The start of 2001 marked one of Indian cricket’s glorious chapters, with a settled batting line-up as the main strength.
It proved to be an era when everything was set in stone with clearly defined roles. Every player owned a permanent batting number, Sehwag – opener, Dravid at No 3 (occasionally swapping with VVS Laxman who would be at No 6), Tendulkar No 4 and Ganguly at No 5.
The result, starting with the 2001 Eden Gardens epic, was a series of blockbuster batting displays.
After all of them retired, it didn’t take long for India to find another settled, strong combination around Virat Kohli, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane.
With all three having retired from Tests, the main challenge for the team management is to zero in on the right fit for each batting spot in the middle-order.
The opening combination of KL Rahul and Yashasvi Jaiswal is settled but at the moment, only Shubman Gill at No. 4 and Rishabh Pant at No. 5 look locked in the middle-order. India needs more options before settling on the right players for the long-term.
At one time, the future looked promising when under the captaincy of Rohit Sharma in the 2024 series against England, a batch of young batters made the difference – Sarfaraz Khan and Devdutt Padikkal among them. Both marked their Test debut games with half-centuries.
For various reasons, however, the two were discarded – Sarfaraz played one more series, in 2024 against New Zealand and Padikkal one more Test match, in 2024 against Australia at Perth.
The two are again in the Test side for the upcoming Sri Lanka series.
In the 2025 whitewash at home at the hands of South Africa, the batting lay poorly exposed. The experiment to bank on multi-dimensional players for runs in the middle and lower middle-order – Washington Sundar, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel and Axar Patel misfired. Tendulkar and Kohli’s batch are proof of the value of specialist batters.
With the Indian team desperate for quality options, Padikkal and Sarfaraz are back in the fray. Both have age on their side. Going into the first Test, the 26-year-old Padikkal is the front-runner. He was in the original squad, and backed it with an impressive unbeaten 142 in the warm-up game against Sri Lanka Cricket XI. The 28-year-old Sarfaraz has been picked as a last-minute replacement for Sai Sudharsan and will most likely have to wait for his chance.
In the two Tests that the tall left-hand batter from Karnataka played in 2024, he had shown glimpses of his potential, scoring 65 at No 4 in Dharamsala against England. His second Test was in Australia, where he got 25 at No 3 in the second innings at Perth.
Overlooked since, in the last domestic season Padikkal has gone from strength to strength. The improvement in his game was there to see in the warm-up game where he looked the best batter from both sides.
In Sri Lanka, the main challenge will be playing spin. Against the spinners, the 6ft 3in Padikkal’s long stride is an advantage, where he is able to use his height and reach to meet good-length balls and smother the spin. During his unbeaten hundred against SLC XI, he also showed his strong backfoot game to dominate.
His long-term batting coach Mohammed Nasseruddin said that in preparation for the Test series, the southpaw worked on his footwork against spinners, having sessions at his training academy, KIOC, and the KSCA Academy at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium.
“After returning from India A tour of Sri Lanka, he had a short break and he actually came up with the idea of practicing with Kookaburra balls, which helped him a lot because they use them in Sri Lanka. Since Test cricket involves a lot of spinners, we practiced against a wide variety of them, including two-three left-arm spinners.”
“His timing (against SLC XI) was crisp, and he was consistently hitting from the middle of the bat with a full face,” said Nasseruddin.
While the coach also gives credit to the impact Dinesh Karthik and Andy Flower had on Padikkal at Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the IPL, taking over the Karnataka team’s captaincy mid-season in the last Ranji Trophy campaign was another turning point.
“His knock against Punjab changed his entire batting dynamic. He began to believe in his power to hit effectively in both white-ball and red-ball cricket,” said his coach.
In their must-win last league game against hosts Punjab, in February, Karnataka faced the challenge of scoring 250 runs in limited time to pip Saurashtra in the knock-out race. In a sensational display of captaincy and skill, Padikkal led from the front, scoring an unbeaten 120 off 85 balls to guide his team to a crucial five-wicket victory, chasing down 250 in under 28 overs. He ensured Karnataka’s qualification for the knockouts and eventually led them to the Ranji final scoring 543 runs in six matches at an average of 60.33.
The towering 25-year-old had his ups and downs in the last few seasons, mainly battling a health issue (an acute intestinal issue), but now having recovered fully, he looks fitter and in good batting rhythm. In an interview during the Ranji Trophy campaign, Padikkal’s coach said that for the all-format batter making the right adjustments from T20 to red ball is the key.
“Now he can handle better the deliveries which are keeping low and the balls which are a little short. He is standing a little low and knees are a little flexed, earlier he was standing upright, because you need to have a different kind of technique in T20s as nobody pitches the ball up. He is in a good space. We can see the results.”
Sri Lanka is an important series for India to get its batting line-up in order. Instilling confidence in their next crop of batters will be important.