Prithvi Shaw, popularly known as the next big thing in Indian cricket, performed remarkably well in his very first international Test. He scored a century on his very first Test match and showed the glimpses of his extraordinary skills. While KL Rahul, the opening partner with him, had a miserable outing without a run on the board, Shaw, with a flurry of nineteen boundaries made a striking 134 off 154 balls. Such an innings from a newcomer set a lot expectation on him for the future prospects in Indian cricket.
The adolescent Shaw’s career hit the right notes with also this achievement: he became part of elite Test cricketing Indian members who scored on their debut Test match besides great Rohit Sharma, Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag and Shikhar Dhawan.
Shaw however had the highest ever score to his name in the Vijay Hazare Trophy but left everyone scratching their heads as to why such a drought came. Shaw’s record stood for a few years with just three runs above the target being chased and that also got broken.
But as it was in the beginning so were the troubles with respect to the maintained form in the apex level. Like the fans even the experts were baffled by this phenomenon especially after seeing the talents he possessed and such bright prospects ahead of him.
After winning the 2018-19 Border-Gavaskar Trophy series, India toured Australia for the 2020-21 season to play the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. In this respect, India became the first Asian team to win a Test series in Australia. This series, under the captaincy of Virat Kohli, also showed how effective the Indian pace attack was, apart from their spin wizards.
The series did not begin in the manner in which India “defended” the T-20 World Cup. The 2020-21 series saw India braze bullying their porter in soaking revenge on the 2020 excision.
This is where the story took an interesting turn when a much-vaunted debutant Prithvi Shaw was out bowled by Mitchell Starc on just the 2nd ball of the very first match of the series. It set the tone for how competitive this series was going to be.
Former Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting, who has been the captain of Australia when AFP won 2 World Cups, was also on commentary in the series. Ponting had been assessing Shaw’s batting techniques and pointed out that posture Shaw was very adept at playing balls which were being cut away off the body post but had trouble with balls that had been played to the body.
Ponting remarked that: ‘He’s got a little chink in his in chink in his armour. I think. It’s the ball that comes back into him, he is absolutely at ease playing the ball away from the body. Getting the head in order and playing under the eyes is not the problem, the problem lies in the fact that he does not come forward with the front foot to the line of the ball, and there’s plenty of gap between the bat pad, and that’s precisely the area where the Aussies would want to exploit. So Starc will look to bring one back in – ‘through the gate.’’ Apart from the fact that the former Australian captain N. P. Turner, generally identified with the Warner circle, predicts the dismissal of Prithvi Shaw during the match between India and Australia.
Indian batsman Prithvi Shaw faces trouble against inswinger. This problem in more depth was exploited on the very next ball when Starc pitched an inswinger, looking for the gap between Shaw’s bat and pad due to minimal foot movement. He was also dismissed similarly in the second innings, but this time around it was Pat Cummins who managed to take the same position and exploit the same weakness.
Prithvi Shaw was dismissed from the Indian test team after this match and till now he has not made a comeback to the Test team once again.
In the first match, the batsmen for India had a very bad outing where they could only score a paltry 36 runs in the second inning before getting bowled out again. Notwithstanding this early barrier, India proved so, as they managed to turn things around in the series.
