The young Indian batter, Ruturaj Gaikwad played an outstanding knock of 108 off just 127 balls on day 1 of the third and final unofficial Test on Thursday against New Zealand A. However, the visitors made a strong comeback to dismiss the Indian team for just 293 runs on Thursday. Gaikwad, who hasn’t played a lot of red-ball cricket in the past few seasons, played with some dominance as he smashed 12 fours and two sixes.
Gaikwad shared a match-defining 134-run partnership with Upendra Yadav, who scored 76 runs. Yadav’s effort consisted of nine fours and two sixes. However, India A also witnessed a batting collapse and they eventually got bundled out for 293 from a strong 245 for four. India A was all out in 86.4 overs with Matthew Fisher taking four wickets for 52 runs in 14 overs.
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Jacob Duffy and Joe Walker also joined the party and scalped a couple of wickets each. Skipper Priyank Panchal was dismissed cheaply for just five runs, while his opening partner Abhimanyu Easwaran failed to contribute much as well as he perished after scoring 38 runs. Sarfaraz Khan got dismissed for a silver duck, while Rajat Patidar got 30 off 52 balls.
Speaking to reporters after stumps, as quoted by PTI, Ruturaj Gaikwad spoke about the challenge of playing red-ball cricket and said that in the first two games he felt a bit rushed.
🙌🏻🇮🇳 END OF DAY 1! Thanks to Ruturaj Gaikwad's hundred & Upendra Yadav's 76, we end the day & our first innings with a total of 2️⃣9️⃣3️⃣ on board!
📸 KSCA • #INDvNZ #NZvIND #INDAvNZA #TeamIndia #BharatArmy pic.twitter.com/NMuiVwSDYd
— The Bharat Army (@thebharatarmy) September 15, 2022
Explaining the same, Ruturaj Gaikwad said, “It’s a massive difference playing days cricket after so long. I feel in the first two innings, first two games I was rushed a bit. Hence, my mindset here was to just stay on the wicket. I knew that their spinners are not up to the mark, so obviously the runs would flow. Its like you are used to that kind of bat flow where your bat flows naturally to all the shots you want to play in T20 cricket.”
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He further elaborated, “You have to be ready for each and every ball and have three particular options in your mind for each ball,” he said. “Then all of a sudden to come in red-ball cricket where you don’t really have to look for runs, you have to focus on staying on the wicket. The first thing you have to do here, shifting from white to red is stopping that instinct and trying to just focus on your breath, play ball by ball, session by session and trying to play out the day.”
Ruturaj Gaikwad concluded by saying that a player has to apply the basics for red-ball cricket.
