On the eve of the one-off Test between Indian and Afghanistan at Mullanpur, Indian head coach Gautam Gambhir had spoken about giving the Indian number three batsman Sai Sudharsan an extended run and showing faith in him as India’s number three. In the six Test matches prior to Saturday’s Test, Sudharsan had scored 307 runs at an average of 27.45 runs in 11 innings and the 24-year-old hit his third half-century in Tests with his knock of 81 runs against Afghanistan on Saturday. Sudharsan spoke about how having the backing of the head coach gives a player like so much ‘freedom’ and how it also takes the mind off from thinking about playing the next game or not.
“It gives so much freedom, it gives so much certainty mentally that when the coach and the team and the captain sports you and backs you. And wants you to do well for the country, he wants you to do well for the team and win games. So it is such an honour at first place and obviously, it gives a lot of freedom for you to express yourself and do what you can do at your best, rather than thinking about scoring or thinking about whether I will play the next game or not. Whatever thoughts of that sort, that never arises, because you’ve got a great freedom from the team. So I think it’s a pleasure,’ said Sudharsan while addressing the press conference at the end of the day’s play.
After Indian opener Yashasvi Jaiswal fell to pacer Mohammad Saleem after a knock of 24 runs, Sudharsan had joined vice-captain KL Rahul at the crease. The pair added 139 runs in 185 balls for the second wicket before Sudharsan fell to Saleem in the 43rd over of India’s innings. In the 139-run-partnership, Sudharsan was the dominant partner scoring 81 runs off 104 balls. Rahul, who went on to score a hundred later, scored 56 runs off 81 balls in the partnership with Sudharsan. When asked about what was the conversation between him and Rahul out in the middle and plans, Sudharsan shared how Rahul shares his inputs on how the wicket was behaving as well what options to score runs against the Afghanistan spinners the duo can take. “The conversation was more about understanding what was happening, understanding how the wicket was behaving and who was bowling what. It was more about how the conditions were. And with KL, he gives so much composure when you know, when I bat with him, he gives so much composure and he gives so much certainty. It helps as a batter and he sees the game very well. So he gives a lot of useful cues, which we would use in the game. He shared how the wicket was behaving. Today the wicket was slow and low most of the times and it was spinning. So the talk was about what options we can take. That’s what the conversations with KL were today,” said Sudharsan.