Pant and Gill take different routes up Spin Hill

Two straight drives and an edge resulted in three boundaries in the first over of the day for Rishabh Pant, off the bowling of Ajaz Patel. The spinner then opted for a five-fer, but moments into the day, Pant had already made his mark. He reached a half-century off 36 balls, with 49 of those runs coming in the first hour of play.

When Ajaz corrected his lengths, Pant would go down to bowl him dangerously from the stumps. A couple of sixes on the ground and a reverse-swept boundary followed. In between, Shubman Gill Patel bowled inside out over cover to score a boundary. Together, the duo hit the leading left-arm spinner for 40 runs in their first five overs, forcing Tom Latham to opt for a bowling change.

The previous evening, when India had faltered over a nervy 13 minutes, it had been Patel who created a storm. He had Yashasvi Jaiswal and nightwatchman Mohammad Siraj out after several balls to bring New Zealand back into the game. Heading into the second round and in the absence of Mitchell Santner, he should be New Zealand's biggest wicket-taking option. But in that critical first hour, India had managed to defer their threat until later in the day, although Patel himself felt he had not bowled badly at that stage.

“I guess this morning I felt like I bowled really well but Rishabh batted brilliantly, obviously he's been phenomenal throughout this tour and he's the kind of player that keeps putting us under pressure regardless of the situation .”

“And like I said, it's about keeping things simple, it's about controlling what you can control. When you get the ball into good areas and they play a good shot, it's out of your control, so for me it was just trust,” Patel admitted at the end of the day.

While Pant was all about unsettling the spinners, his partner Gill took a more measured approach. The two had a lot of fun recently when they faced each other for the first time in Test cricket in a 167-run stand in Chennai. Gill had even joked at the time that he was worried that Pant's insistence on tapping the stick twice in the middle of the crease might damage his stick. India were way ahead there and batting was about making money. Here the pressure was on the young duo and each man offered different methods of responding.

If Pant was all about throwing knockout blows, Gill preferred to dodge and stab, perhaps taking a few punches, but all the while focused and just trying to stay in the ring. So he didn't mind getting beaten by the torrential turns that Patel sometimes got. He put it back and continued with what he had been working on.

2024 has already been Gill's best year in Test cricket. His average so far is over 50. But it hasn't been smooth sailing all the time. After missing the Bengaluru Test, he came to Pune but was undone in both innings by left-arm spin from Mitchell Santner. Gill has a reputation for having an insatiable appetite for simply hitting the nets. He now admitted that he did not have enough time to prepare for the Pune Test.

“Look, I didn't really have much time because I got injured in the first test. Even leading up to these tests, I didn't really train much because of the injury. So I didn't get that much.” “I did two net sessions before the Test match in Pune and I'm the type of person who likes to have long training sessions so that I'm confident about it,” he said.

There were two full training sessions in Mumbai, India, which Gill attended. One day before the test was particularly noteworthy. For after completing his routine batting set, Gill took aside a number of club bowlers that the Mumbai Cricket Association had made available to him for a separate session. They were all left-arm spinners, with Yashasvi Jaiswal's legspin being the special case.

The goal was to defend the ball well. In Pune he was in defense against Santner twice. Only once this year had he been bogged down in such a manner – against Tom Hartley in Hyderabad. From that first Test against England to Pune, Gill had handled the left-arm spin challenge quite deftly. Again, he started to put his bat in front of the field with a little more confidence and trusted his defense. At one point, when Ajaz slowed his pace to under 80km/h, he fell on such a ball, but on the whole Gill was able to see through the biggest danger for a right-hander on this pitch and get to 90km/h.

“It is one of the better shots I have played in Test cricket. Leading up to this friendly it was all about working on the areas I've worked on before. In the England series we played, I think when I was. “When I was batting in that series, I tried my best to play against the spinners and that's what I tried to do before this match , return to this setting The end of the day.

There was nervousness as he began the inning. The first ball he got from Ajaz yesterday was an inside edge on his pad. There was another edge that hit past the slip before he unleashed a few swings. “Yesterday I played sweeps and put those fielders in the spots where I would get easy singles. For me it’s all about having those shots but playing them when I know it’s absolutely necessary.”

Today, Pant ensured that his partner didn't have to struggle with his nerves for long at the start of the game. By chance or design, the two achieved exactly what they wanted, and India would not mind the different means as long as they lead to an end like the one we have today.