No.3 continues to be a mystery in India’s batting lineup. At a time when most top teams prefer to announce their entire XI on the eve of the Test match, India were not ready to even announce who would bat at No.3 in the first Test against England at Headingley in Leeds, starting Friday. India’s new captain, Shubman Gill, refused to confirm the No.3 batter in the pre-match press conference on Thursday, leaving the fans, pundits and even the opposition guessing.
The battle appears to be between Sai Sudharsan and Karun Nair. Sudharsan is yet to make his Test debut, while it would not be short of a second debut for Nair, who last played for India almost nine years ago.
With an average of 39.93 in 29 first-class matches, Sudharsan doesn’t have jaw-dropping numbers that automatically give him the edge. But he has had an outstanding IPL, winning the Orange Cap for scoring 779 runs for the Gujarat Titans. His pedigree to tackle fast bowlers and a calm head make him a good bet for international cricket.
Karun Nair, on the other hand, comes with a truckload of runs in domestic cricket. He literally barged into the Indian side after being in the wilderness for a good half a decade since becoming the second Indian to score a triple century.
If it were a white-ball fixture, then one could argue that India might keep their No.3 flexible depending on who is batting in the middle among the openers. It can be Sudharsan if Yashasvi Jaiswal is out, and if KL Rahul is then the first to be dismissed, then Karun Nair can walk in. This is, of course, assuming that both Nair and Sudharsan are playing the first Test and India are going in with a batting-heavy XI.
But keeping your No.3 spot flexible in Test cricket is not what top teams or any team do. Till the Australia series, it was Gill himself who batted at No.3, but now it has been confirmed, first by vice captain Rishabh Pant and then by Gill himself, that he would slide to No.4, a spot graced by Virat Kohli for more than a decade, the choice came down between Sudharsan and Nair.
“We actually were waiting. The summer has been a little bit different to the other English summers, and it’s been a little bit dry, so I was just waiting to see the wicket one last time to see the final combinations and decide on that,” Gill said when asked about India’s No.3 batter in the first Test.
On being pressed for the No.4 spot, Gill said it was decided that he would bat No.4 after Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma retired from Test cricket.
“There was, I mean after Virat Bhai retired, GG Bhai (Head coach Gautam Gambhir) and I had a discussion about it and we were both clear that he wanted me to bat at number four and I was also clear that I also wanted to bat at that number,” Gill added.