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Mayank Agarwal 2.00

A few years ago, Agarwal changed his approach from compulsive shot-making to batting time, it's paid rich dividends

Mayank Agarwal batting. Mayank Agarwal 200, Mayank Agarwal centuries, Mayank Agarwal TEst, India vs Bangladesh cricket match, Mayank Agarwal, India vs Bangladesh series, cricket news, sports news, indian express Mayank Agarwal gestures towards the dressing room after bringing up his double hundred against Bangladesh on Friday. It was his second double ton in four matches. (BCCI)

“Do you love batting?” Mayank Agarwal was taken aback by the question from his childhood coach RX Murali. “Yes, yes, I love it, obviously,” he nodded. “Then why are you spending so much time sitting in the dressing room?” questioned Murali. The chat dates back to the time when Agarwal would hit a sparkling 30-40 and get out to a flashy shot and warm the chair in the change room.

None of the weary Bangladeshi bowlers and fielders would have asked that question to Agarwal on a day he ransacked them for 243 runs and propelled India to 493 for 6 — a lead of 343 runs. Murali was all smiles in Surat, talent-spotting for an IPL team at the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament, as he kept track of Agarwal’s progression from 100 to 150 to 200 .

“I remember telling him, ‘if you like batting then keep batting, there are men paid to field the ball all day long, bowl all day long and you are paid to bat all day long – why would you let this dream go and instead be satisfied with a small score?’ I remember telling him that if a batsman gets 12-15 good days in a season and he should make each of those days count. Really count,” Murali told The Indian Express by phone.

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As far as Murali is concerned, the importance of a big double hundred against Bangladesh goes beyond the lack of venom in the attack. It was more about how self-driven, focussed, and in control Agarwal remained during the course of a long knock. The bowling wasn’t strong enough but the question was whether India would take their foot off the pedal. They didn’t, as Agarwal and Ajinkya Rahane soaked up the early loss of Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli, who was out for a rare duck, trapped in front of the wicket by Abu Jayed’s gentle in-dipper.

Festive offer

Those who have tuned in to the last few run-laden seasons from Agarwal might not realise it but there was a time when the talented opener was gripped with self-doubts. Since his teenage days, shot-making wasn’t a problem; his ambition for big scores was. But since the runs kept coming almost easily, he never quite graduated mentally to the next step.

When runs stopped coming in domestic cricket, coupled with the fact that his friends and peers from Karnataka and the domestic circuit started to go past him — some breaking into the Indian team and a few making India A — he began to fret.

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“The self-doubts did cause me worries but it was also a sign that he now cared. And he wanted to change his approach,” said Murali.

Rebuilding career, brick by brick

The path ahead was clear: the focus shouldn’t be on shots but the number of balls faced in a match. The practice hours in Bangalore lengthened. A check list was drawn. Was the technique good? By and large it was, but they realised the defense had to be tightened up. And the ability to take singles and rotate the strike.

“Even in matches, his focus then changed to counting the number of singles. We had a number in mind: at least 30 singles. And instead of counting the number of fours, he started to count the singles.” Incidentally, on Friday, he had 51 singles.

Not that it led to things changing overnight. The coach and the player discovered that the mental tiredness would set in which would trigger problems in shot selection.

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“So, I would make him train in the nets when he was really tired. Say after he had already played for a few hours, then take him into an intense net session. What that did was it helped him discover for himself the mistakes that crept in. It could be a foot movement, or the kind of shots he played, or trouble in watching the ball carefully. So, when he discovered it for himself, the solution was easy.”

It then was carried on into match situations.

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“Now he was aware when the first sign of the mistake comes. When you can spot it quickly, you can solve it as well. That was what all those long training did. It wasn’t just him hitting balls mindlessly but these were the things we worked on. So, it isn’t a surprise that he scores big hundreds these days.”

It was the breezy start to his cricketing career, that in hindsight, led to a sense of complacency in Agarwal.

“When he was 17, he had played for India U-19 and got everyone’s praise about his shot-making ability. That led to him focussing more and more on hitting the ball and settling for scores far less than what he was capable of. Things started to turn in his early 20s. It was then that he started to see his friends go past him. He began to wonder what he wasn’t doing right, and later when big scores didn’t come, he started to question himself — but he got out of it and decided to do something about it,” Murali says of the 28-year-old.

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His friends and former teammate Robin Uthappa says Agarwal had “started to criticise himself a bit too much when he was down. And he was a very restless character too. That combo hurt him then”.

The all-round mental development began a few seasons ago and it has been recorded in sports pages extensively – from vipassana to self-help books, from meditation to getting a routine to help him calm down.

“The main focus for us has been the first hour of play. His calming routines help him stay in the moment then and focus on each ball. Once the hour passes, it becomes a sort of auto-pilot. Everything is smooth and natural,” the coach says.

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Bangladesh would agree as the sixes kept coming — eight in all — as he started to size up and swing. The boundary riders didn’t matter as he started to scythe away. “I am an aggressive batsman and I back myself. If I am batting and if I feel the bowler landing in my half or flighting, I definitely plan and attack,” Agarwal would later say.

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His coach though reckons we are yet to see the real Agarwal, even after 28 fours and 8 sixes.

“He is a wonderfully attacking batsman, capable of so much more. I would say he is still evolving. Right now, the focus is how to play long knocks without losing concentration.”

And if at all his mind wandred on Friday, his captain Virat Kohli was out there, reminding him to carry on. When he reached the hundred and 150, Kohli would put up two fingers, signalling a double hundred. Once that arrived, Kohli wanted a triple, but as it would turn out, Agarwal ended up holing out at 243.

Once he gets back to the hotel, Agarwal lands on a virtual island and starts gunning down other people on PubG. Hunting down daddy tons in the day, immersing himself in virtual bloodbath in the evenings — just another day in the life of a Test opener.

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First uploaded on: 16-11-2019 at 04:00 IST
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