With Indian team dropping Cheteshwar Pujara from the squad after World Test Championship final, the impression given is the team management is now looking ahead into the future with the established stars no longer guaranteed a spot.
However, with Ajinkya Rahane making a successful return to the Test fold, there’s still hope for the ageing stars.
At 29, Hanuma Vihari is no longer a spring chicken who has also fallen down the pecking order having last played a Test in July 2022 – the rescheduled match against England at The Oval.
Vihari is now playing in the Duleep Trophy where he’s leading South Zone against West Zone in the title clash from Wednesday in Bengaluru.
With India set to play their first Test of latest WTC cycle against West Indies, Vihari is still unaware of the reasons behind him losing his spot.
“Definitely, there was disappointment. I didn’t find a reason why I was dropped and it was the only thing that was bothering me. Nobody really contacted me and told me the reasons why I was dropped,” Vihari told The Indian Express.
However, he has moved on.
“It took some time and I have gone through ups and downs and I’m not worried about it now. I’ve put aside my personal side of things and I don’t take too much stress about whether I’m in the Indian team or not. There are other matches to win and it is about winning the trophies,” Vihari said.
A reason that was reported in the media was that the team wants players who can show more intent when it comes to scoring in Test cricket. It’s something that Pujara has also dealt with.
Vihari though rejects the notion that he can only bat at a slow pace.
In the Duleep Trophy semifinal recently, the middle-order batter showed he can switch gears when needed as he scored 43 off 42 in South Zone’s second innings that culminated in a successful chase of 215.
“Test cricket can be played in different ways and you can’t just stick to one way of playing. If you take the last match (Duleep Trophy semifinal) for instance, it was an opportunity to show different skill sets that a batsman requires to play all three formats,” Vihari said.
“Test cricket allows you to show that. On Day 1 and 2, there was proper line and length bowling and you had to leave those deliveries because the conditions were challenging. But when the pitch eased out and when we were chasing, you could see shades of the 50-over and 20-over game coming into play because of time constraints. That is the beauty of Test cricket, to adapt to different situations that change every now and then. It is all about having that game sense rather than just batting one way,” he added.
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