Having moved up the ranks from a debutant to captain in six years at MS Dhoni’s CSK, Ruturaj Gaikwad knows how to live and grow under the shadow of a legend. By his own admission, he might be an IPL leader but “there is just one boss in Chennai.” Gaikwad is used to playing second-fiddle and his efforts going under-appreciated. The story was the same in the second ODI at Raipur.
Gaikwad took fewer balls and scored more runs than Virat Kohli in their close to 200-runs partnership, but it wasn’t his name that the fans were chanting in the aisles. They weren’t being unfair on the youngster, the gulf of class between the master and the apprentice was stark.
After the game, the 28-year-old would call his 83-ball 105 – first ODI hundred – the best knock of his career. But there certainly was scope of improvement. When batting with the greatest, the flaws stand out. Kohli would play the field, find the gaps and play risk-free cricket. Gaikwad would have his struggles at the start of the innings.
He would speak about the experience and the tips he got while batting with Kohli. “I was trying to be in my zone and not really think about how he is batting or how he is able to score runs. But the chat in between was very clear. We had spoken about maneuvering the gaps or how to hit those boundaries, how we can rotate strikes. So, I think the chat was around that and I think we had really good running between the wickets as well,” he said.
In years to come, Gaikwad will compete with the likes of Shreyas Iyer, Tilak Verma, and even Kohli, to retain his place in India’s ODI side. His hundred at Raipur would keep him in contention for the 2027 World Cup. But will he grow to be a playing XI regular in two years’ time, like he did at CSK? This will prove to be a tougher challenge.
The first ball he faced would have given him an idea of the steep ascent that he had to climb in international cricket. This was just after South Africa’s deadliest pacer – the tall Marco Jansen – had exposed Yashasvi Jaiswal’s ability to fend a rising ball. Jaiswal’s knock of mishits and misjudgments would end with him pulling a Marco rising ball into the hands of the short square-leg fielder.
The South African pacer would test Gaikwad too with a similar ball that would shoot into the ribs of the batsman, after bouncing. The ball would hit the batsman’s gloves and fly over the wicket-keeper’s head. The South Africans would throw up their hands and grimace.
There were a few more close shaves, many of those would ironically get him runs. Another Marco lifter would climb to the helmet, Gaikwad, with his head down, would swish the bat. The ball would fly over fine-leg for a six.
He would try pre-meditation but that too didn’t work. The fielders on the off-side were in the circle and the bowler would pitch the ball on the off-stump. A regular cover drive, like the one Shubman Gill hits, would have fetched him a boundary. But Gaikwad had made plans to hit the off-side ball over mid-wicket. There was a struggle to pinch singles with risk-free shots, something that Virat was doing effortlessly. Gaikwad would try to tap the ball to third man but ended up playing too square and not fine enough.