Of all the many cherries India can take from pocketing the Test series against England at Ranchi – Ravichandran Ashwin’s magical performance with the new ball, more important runs for young guns Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill – perhaps the biggest and rosiest was the performance of new wicketkeeper Dhruv Jurel.
Ever since the irrepressible Rishabh Pant was badly injured in a car accident in December 2022, India have been searching for a ready-made replacement without success. They tried Ishan Kishan for a couple of Tests against West Indies. They experimented with KL Rahul, who played a couple of Tests against South Africa without doing much wrong until coach Rahul Dravid decided that it was a task too big for him to keep wicket against Bazball on Indian pitches. That left KS Bharat, who played in all five Tests against Australia at the beginning of 2023 with the gloves, until he too was discarded after the second Test at Visakhapatnam.
