India vs West Indies 2018: Mayank Agarwal Can Bat in Any Position Feels His Batting Coach

After a long wait, Karnataka opening batsman Mayank Agarwal finally made it to the Team India Test team for the two-match Test series against West Indies. Despite scoring 1171 runs in 2017-18 season and 375 in the three A Test matches against South Africa this season. Prithvi Shaw was preferred ahead of him for the tour of England. Shaw didn’t make it to the Playing XI but managed to get an exposure in Team India.

Finally, Mayank’s long wait came to an end when he was picked for the Test series against West Indies. The 27-year-old will look to make his Test debut. The two-match series is slated to be played between 4^th to 16^th October. There are chances that both Prithvi Shaw and Mayank Agarwal might make the cut. Agarwal has been a prolific run scorer in the domestic format. Hence the call-up was expected. Mayank was pretty happy to be finally named in the Indian Test squad.

It [Selection] was long awaited, so he was pretty ecstatic about it,” ‘RX’ Murali, the batting coach of Mayank Agarwal was quoted as saying by the Sportstar. “One good thing was he kept getting runs, so he was in a great frame of mind. All he could do then was sit and wait. Selection is not in his hands, but batting well is — he did what he had to do to keep his spirits high,” he added.

Before the start of the tour of England, India had three settled opening batters in the form of Shikhar Dhawan, Murali Vijay and KL Rahul. Dhawan and Vijay were woefully out of touch and fell to horrendous shots. Vijay was even dropped from the squad in favour of Prithvi Shaw for the last couple of Tests. The below-par performances of Dhawan and Vijay has opened the floodgates for Mayank to make his Test debut.

Mayank Agarwal is a firm believer of his skills and talent

“There’s a different way of looking at things. Yes, this Indian team has great batsmen, but if you don’t believe that you can create magic, then you shouldn’t be playing. This is what he (Mayank) believes in.

“Even with this Indian line-up, you never know when someone could fall out of form. You’ve to be ready at all times and jump in when an opportunity presents itself. He has been scoring runs for the past 11 months; he needs to keep at it irrespective of who he’s playing,” Murali said.

Mayank Agarwal has been an opener since his junior days. He has hardly batted in other positions. As of now, India is in look for a batsman especially in the shorter formats who can be flexible in their batting order and can be adjusted according to the situation of the game. However, Murali is not ready to accept that he can’t be flexible.

“He can be flexible too,” Murali argues. “It’s all about the mindset. If you want to be playing at the international level, and if there’s an opening in the middle order, he can definitely do it. It’s just some small changes in his game plan and he’ll be up for it. In fact, he did bat at No. 4 in a few IPL matches for Kings XI last IPL.”