Bowlers shine, batsmen struggle in ‘one-hour challenge’ at preparatory camp

On the penultimate day of the preparatory camp in Bengaluru, the Indian team travelled to the open ground in Alur, 25kms away from the city, to participate in a Test cricket simulation exercise, where the batting department was put to the test against India’s bowlers. Instead of a conventional practice game, each batsman was asked to negotiate a trio of fast bowlers followed by a trio of spin bowlers for half-an-hour each to prepare for the upcoming Test series, reported India Today.

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Openers Murali Vijay and Shikhar Dhawan faced the fast bowling trio of Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, and Bhuvneshwar Kumar for the first half hour followed by another half hour of spin from Amit Mishra, Ravindra Jadeja, and R Ashwin. Vijay, who has been a consistent player for India in Tests, looked out of touch and was castled by Ishant, while he threw away his wicket once to a run-out too. Dhawan has been practising hard on his batting in the last few days and looked confident against the pacers before gifting his wicket away to Ashwin.

All eyes were on captain Virat Kohli and the skipper looked in a good groove against the pacers, but was troubled by the left-arm spin of Ravindra Jadeja. Facing right arm off-spin, left arm spin and leg-spin proved to be a difficult task for Kohli and he fell to Jadeja twice, once stumped and on another occasion he holed out to long-off. Rohit Sharma, who is fighting for a Test place, also struggled and lost his wicket to a reverse sweep.

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Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane, who faced Shardul Thakur, Varun Aaron, Mohammed Shami, Stuart Binny, and the spin trio of Jayant Yadav, Shahbaz Nadeem, and Vijay, looked the most comfortable in the middle during the exercise, said a report in India Today.

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