Magnificent Mayank takes one step at a time and controls what he can

There are things you can control and then there are things you cannot. For all the talk about merit and hard work and passion and grit and determination, a lot needs to fall in place for one to be able able to retain a spot as an opener of a champion side, especially after failing to do well in the last few Test matches.

Such is the case of Mayank Agarwal, who was not a certainty for the Mumbai Test. Had India decided to give Ajinkya Rahane another chance, Agarwal would have missed this game. His 13 and 17 in Kanpur allied against him. Moreover, the runs have stopped flowing ever since his double century against Bangladesh in 2019/20. The 58 at Wellington a couple of months after that had been his only meaningful contribution in 13 innings. 

Agarwal was supposed to open the innings in England this summer, alongside Rohit Sharma. But fate had other plans. He got clonked on his head during a net session. He was left with little option but to see his old friend K.L. Rahul grab the opportunity with both hands: 'I accepted it and continued to work hard and work on my process and my game.'

Against New Zealand at Kanpur, Agarwal fell to Kyle Jamieson and Tim Southee. The dismissals were eerily similar. Instead of staying beside the line and playing close to the body, he lunged forward and jabbed the ball at around off stump, edging it to the wicketkeeper in the first innings, and to the slips in the second. His extravagant backlift also contributed to his downfall against Southee.

Agarwal is among the cricketers who spend too much time analysing their own stance, guard, backlift, head position, trigger movement after every failure. While this shows his eagerness to learn and improve, the obsession with details can be also backfire. Head coach Rahul Dravid perhaps understood this. After his failure at Kanpur, the first advice Agarwal got from Dravid was to stop thinking about technique in the middle of the series. 

The backlift remained the same in Mumbai, but Agarwal adopted a more side-on stance. The change was minute, yet significant. On Day 1, he looked more assured against Southee, played close to his body, and rarely got dragged on. At the other end, Jamieson hardly posed any problem. And as soon as the tentativeness wore off, he lit up Wankhede with immaculate off-side play.

Watching Agarwal take on spinners was a thing of beauty. As brilliant as Ajaz Patel was throughout the game, he never really managed to bother the free-flowing Agarwal. On the opening day, Ajaz claimed four wickets, but Agarwal lofted him for four sixes. There was a sense of calm assurance in the sixes. The footwork was so rhythmic that the moment he would leave the crease, one could almost foresee him reaching the pitch of the ball.

As his teammates succumbed without much resistance, Agarwal seemed to have a clear, definite plan to tackle Ajaz. He never got stuck on the crease. Even when India were in deep trouble, he rarely missed out on scoring opportunities. Even when Ajaz got Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli in the space of five balls, Agarwal responded with a clean strike over extra cover and an emphatic pull through deep mid-wicket.

'He was bowling exceedingly well. But each time anything was in our half (our arc), the plan was to be a bit more attacking. Anything that came a little towards us in length, we were going to go for it,' he explained his approach against Ajaz.

Agarwal could have missed the second Test, and subsequently a ticket to South Africa. Now, after his 150 and 62 (he scored 17 fewer than the entire New Zealand team's match aggregate of 229), the scenario has changed. He is still not a certainty in the playing XI, but if his batting in Mumbai is anything to go by, he seems to have found his mojo.