Young Turk Gill and seasoned pro Ashwin deliver an unexpected 1-2 knockout punch

Shubman Gill has been in exceptional form since February. Despite a shaky start in the England home series, where he struggled with underwhelming performances after moving down to No. 3 position last year, the talented right-hander faced pressure. In the first of five Tests against England in Hyderabad, he scored just 23 and 0 after a highest of 36 in seven innings. It was natural for him to feel the need to prove himself and justify the team management's faith in him.

The turnaround came in the next game in Visakhapatnam, when he backed up 34 in the first innings with 104 in the second. It catalysed the start of a grand run during which he racked up further centuries against England in Dharamsala and Bangladesh in Chennai, apart from two other half-tons, in his next seven knocks.

Few of those efforts, however, would have given him as much satisfaction as his superbly crafted 90 on day two of the final Test against New Zealand. On a Wankhede Stadium strip where it was impossible to feel ‘in’, Gill looked the most comfortable of all batters barring Rishabh Pant, grinding it out for three and a half hours as he trusted his defence – a rarity for Indians this entire series – and played to his strengths, all while having ‘fun’, as he put it after another fascinating day’s action.

Much of Gill’s third Test knock in the 90s came in the company of the effervescent Pant, blessed with the great gift of scattering fields and scuppering gameplans in the twinkle of an eye. While Pant subjected New Zealand to a proper lashing – his fifty came off 36 deliveries – Gill took the traditional route to the highest individual score of the match, another affirmation of his growing credentials while cementing his status as India’s one-drop in Tests for the foreseeable future.

Gill, four years young in international cricket, wouldn’t have minded sharing Saturday’s limelight with a 38-year-old seasoned pro who sets high standards for himself. R Ashwin, Player of the Series in the 2-0 rout of Bangladesh in September, will be the first to admit he has been off the boil for much of the last two and a half matches against the Kiwis. But when it came to the crunch, he lifted himself out of a rut by turning to an old friend, the carrom ball, to bail him out.

In Bengaluru and Pune, Ashwin had only six wickets; in the second of those games, he was out-bowled not just by Mitchell Santner but also Tamil Nadu teammate Washington Sundar, who celebrated his Test recall with 11 scalps. In the first innings in Mumbai, Ashwin toiled for 14 fruitless overs that went for 47. It was easy then to point to the lack of the finish in his action, to tiredness and to the heavy workload of so many years finally catching up with the ace off-spinner.

But champion cricketers don’t just fade away into oblivion. Especially when pushed to a corner, they summon the fortitude to spring back, if only for a brief while. Spring back Ashwin most emphatically did, with the guile and craft that have made him India’s second highest wicket-taker, on a surface where, inarguably, there was plenty of purchase.

The roar he let out when he had Rachin Ravindra stumped, off the final ball of his fifth over, could have been heard as far back as in Chepauk. It had taken him 114 deliveries to get his first wicket of the Test, but he wasn’t going to be kept quiet for too long.

Ashwin has used the carrom ball sparingly in recent times but this afternoon, he produced a couple of beauties to get rid of batters embracing contrasting methods. Glenn Phillips came armed with an attacking mindset, determined to land a few blows before the ball with his name arrived. When it did arrive, it was a thing of beauty, flicked with the middle finger of the right hand, pitching leg, hitting off. Will Young, one of New Zealand’s more dogged willow-wielders, scrapped for two and a half hours and 99 deliveries when Ashwin did him in the air and elicited a return catch with another flicked release. It was a throwback to when Ashwin was a terror, especially in the white-ball game, with his command over a very difficult endeavour.

Between the three sticks, Ashwin also produced a sensational catch, running back from mid-on, to get rid of the dangerously pesky Daryl Mitchell, an effort that lifted the team as much as it did the catcher himself. The old firm of Ravindra Jadeja and Ashwin had combined for that dismissal, but for much of Saturday, it was Gill and Ashwin, a pair split by a couple of cricketing generations, that kept India in the game.