IND vs ENG 2nd Test Match: Rajat Patidar Debut

Rajat Patidar Debut: Rajat Patidar has got a chance to debut in the 2nd test match between IND vs ENG. Rajat’s performance in domestic cricket has been amazing.

The 2nd Test of the series between India and England has kicked off at the YS Rajasekhar International Cricket Stadium in Visakhapatnam. India won the toss and chose to bat first in this match. Young and promising batsman Rajat Patidar has been allowed to make his Test debut for India, fulfilling the persistent demand to include him in the team. Let’s see who Rajat Patidar is and how he might make an impact with the bat in the second Test against England.

Who is Rajat Patidar?

Rajat Patidar seized the opportunity to join the Indian team against England after Virat Kohli opted out of the first two matches for personal reasons. He is from Madhya Pradesh, Patidar, who excels in domestic cricket, has showcased remarkable performances. With 55 first-class matches under his belt, he has amassed 4,000 runs, including 12 centuries and 22 half-centuries, boasting an impressive average of 45.97 in first-class cricket.

Patidar’s performance so far has been good, even in List A matches. He has scored 1985 runs in 58 List A matches with the help of 3 centuries and 12 half-centuries. Rajat has also played 50 T20 matches in List A. In T20, he has scored 1640 runs with the help of 1 century and 14 half-centuries.

ODI debut for India
Rajat Patidar made his ODI debut for India before the Test. Rajat made his ODI debut in December last year on the South Africa tour. Rajata could not perform amazingly in his ODI debut and was out after scoring only 22 runs. Apart from international cricket, Rajat plays IPL with the Royal Challengers Bangalore team along with Virat Kohli.

How Rajat Patidar earned his selection to India’s Test Match
The Madhya Pradesh batter has a reputation for scoring tough runs and is fresh off a century against the England Lions.

Since 2000, only six Indians have made their Test debut after turning 30. Rajat Patidar could be the seventh and only specialist batter after Suryakumar Yadav if he earns his Test cap during the series against England beginning in Hyderabad on Thursday.

Called up late as a replacement for Virat Kohli in the squad, Patidar has grown up batting at No. 3 and 4 for Madhya Pradesh for much of his first-class career. His numbers in red-ball cricket are impressive: 4000 runs in 93 innings at an average of 45.97, with 12 centuries and 22 half-centuries. Over nine years of domestic cricket, he has gained a reputation for being a batter for tough surfaces.

Patidar’s composure has impressed Chandrakant Pandit, the Madhya Pradesh coach. Pandit’s old-school coaching methods have often divided opinion, even though he’s produced results, but for someone as hard-nosed as Pandit to say, he simply let Patidar speak volumes about the player’s maturity.

“Before every game, I have a whiteboard where I list out the strengths and weaknesses of every batter and what I feel they need to work at the nets,” Pandit once said. “While going through this at our meeting, one of the players innocently remarked, ‘Sir, you’ve missed out on Rajat’s name’. I told him, ‘Rehne do, woh sambhaal lega. Uska chinta nahi hai. Let it be; he will manage. I’m not worried about him.)’.”

Patidar was sidelined for much of 2023 because of an Achilles injury that required surgery in London, and he wondered if he’d missed his big chance. Now, his career graph has surged to an unprecedented high, having made his ODI debut in South Africa in December.

Last week, Patidar made 151 off 158 balls in India’s innings of 227 in the first unofficial Test against the England Lions in Ahmedabad. Before that, he smashed 111 in a two-day fixture against the same opponents. This wasn’t him trying his hand at baseball.

It is just who Patidar is. For him, batting is all about the “feel.”.

“I don’t judge myself on performance,” he told ESPNcricinfo after helping Madhya Pradesh win their maiden Ranji Trophy title in June 2022. “I need to get that batting feel—the shots are good, the balance is there, the head is in the right position—and till I don’t get that feel, I don’t feel I’m in good form. It’s every batter’s job to score runs, but for me, if I feel good about my batting, the runs come automatically.”

Another strength of Patidar’s is his ability to deal with setbacks. Four days after finding no takers at the IPL 2022 auction, he began the 2021–22 Ranji season with twin fifties on a rank-turner against Gujarat to help Madhya Pradesh win despite conceding a first-innings lead. The crunched nature of the group stages, thanks to the effects of COVID-19, meant each team had just three matches, and everyone was crucial. Patidar scored 335 runs in four innings at an average of 83.75.

Patidar was in the middle of planning his wedding in May when he got a call from Mike Hesson to join Royal Challengers Bangalore as an injury replacement. Within 24 hours of the call, he had postponed his wedding and was on the plane to IPL 2022, where he became the first uncapped Indian to hit a century in a playoff game.

That knock at Eden Gardens against the Lucknow Super Giants was followed by a half-century in Qualifier 2 against the Rajasthan Royals. He finished that IPL season with 333 runs in eight innings at a strike rate of 152.50. A week after that breakthrough IPL century, Patidar was playing for Madhya Pradesh in the Ranji Trophy knockouts, hitting 323 runs at 80.75, including a match-winning hundred in the final against Mumbai.

He had scored nearly 1000 runs across formats over three months and passed 50 in every knockout game he played. It was around then that his reputation as a big-match player gathered momentum.

“He’s a class player, a superb touch player,” Amol Muzumdar, who was Mumbai’s coach in that final, had said. “His bat flow was really good. I enjoyed… I didn’t ‘enjoy’ it, but I loved the way he approached batting. It’s clean. He’s a good player, and I’d like to congratulate him on getting a Ranji Trophy final hundred. Not many achieve that.”

Patidar made his India A debut later that year, against New Zealand A at home, and hit two hundreds in three red-ball games. Those performances have been the springboard for where he is today.

It’s a landmark moment in the life of someone who had wanted to be a fast bowler, but a lack of opportunities—he didn’t play age-group cricket for Madhya Pradesh until 18—means he had to try and do something different. He switched to off-spin, “basically to do anything to find a place in junior cricket.” But when an anterior cruciate ligament injury forced him to rethink his choice of discipline, he turned to batting after working with Amay Khurasiya, the former India batter and MP captain.

Patidar marked his first-class debut with a hundred against Baroda. He followed that with another century on a rank-turner in Gwalior, where offspinner Jalaj Saxena took the second-best figure in Ranji Trophy history to win Madhya Pradesh the game within three days.

Patidar made 113 off just 131 balls in that game, a knock he rates as among his best. “It was turning square, so you could either survive or look to score quickly,” he had said. “I thought, while I’m in it, I should take the game forward and score runs. It’s not like I didn’t trust my defence, but the situation demanded that I look positive. Everything clicked.”

With Shubman Gill, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, and a wicketkeeper likely to form India’s middle order in the first Test against England in Hyderabad, Patidar might have to wait for his opportunity. But should the need arise, India can call on a seasoned 30-year-old who’s played high-pressure innings in tough, spin-friendly conditions.