The match between Bengal and Jharkhand in the 2022 Ranji Trophy – bear with me here – was something of a curiosity. Jharkhand won the toss, decided to field and came to regret it immensely: Bengal’s openers both got half-centuries, their next two batters both reached triple figures and then numbers five, six, seven and eight all eased past 50. Akash Deep, scourge of England on this third day at the Oval, came out at No 9.
His was a first-class innings in name only: he faced 18 balls and hit eight of them for six (it stands as the joint 15th fastest half-century in the long-form game) as he careened to 53. By which point they were well into day three, the team’s score was an unnecessarily healthy 773 for seven, and Bengal declared.
It was the first time in the history of first-class cricket that there had been nine half-centuries in a single innings, erasing from the record books the Australians who scored 843, with eight fifties, against a combined Oxford and Cambridge University side in 1893. Until this game it was the only half-century of Deep’s career and his highest first-class score. In 37 innings between that game and this he averaged 10.73.
Yet here he was, batting at No 4 after coming in as nightwatchman, facing for large parts of the third morning a bowler in Jamie Overton who had played seven red-ball games in the past two years and taken wickets in two of them.
For a while it felt like this Test match was testing, more than anything, the definition of first-class cricket. Midway through the 26th over Deep, on 21, edged Josh Tongue to third slip, where Zak Crawley continued the theme by fumbling the catch.
This is obviously unfair on Deep, who played an innings which was, whatever your allegiance, remarkably controlled, and potentially, depending on your allegiance, also wildly infuriating.
Nightwatchmanship is a strange concept, suggesting a degree of cowardice on the part of the actual batter who was carded to come in instead – and if, as here, it is the captain who seeks their protection, something of the General Melchett style of leadership. As Jason Gillespie put it, writing about his world-record unbeaten 201 for Australia against Bangladesh in 2006: “When your captain says he doesn’t fancy it and wants you to do his job, you just nod and say: ‘Yes skip, no problem, I will step up and do your job.’”
So Deep’s primary task had been to protect Shubman Gill as the evening gloom descended towards the end of Friday, but he returned on Saturday determined to generate a different kind of gloom in his opponents.
He heaved the third ball of the day through midwicket for four, and was on his way. Precisely 19 overs later he smeared a Gus Atkinson delivery to the square leg boundary to reach his half-century and the residents of the one pocket of the ground overwhelmingly populated by India fans leapt to their feet, singing his name with the uniquely delicious relish that results when delight is blended with disbelief.
He was accompanied throughout, sometimes a little awkwardly, by Yashasvi Jaiswal. The two seemed to communicate rarely, most deliveries followed by them both setting off slowly towards square leg, heads down, on parallel paths 22 yards apart. But it was not until lunch approached that the method showed signs of failure.
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In the 41st over, Deep edged Overton along the ground and through the gap between third slip and gully, those four runs establishing his new first-class high score; in the 42nd he did it again off Josh Tongue, aerially this time, those four runs taking the partnership into triple figures; and in the 43rd he finally fell, sending a leading edge looping to point when trying to work Overton into the leg side. By then he had scored 66, and had watched the night all the way to 12.50pm the following afternoon.
Jaiswal will steal much of the attention, having neatly bookended his series with another century to go with the one he scored at Headingley. But for a while at the Oval, the India opener was outshone, and he contributed precisely half as many runs as his teammate to a partnership of 107.
Given the freedom with which Jaiswal had batted at the start of his innings this was unexpected: at the point the nightwatchman walked out he had sprinted to 51 off 47, and at the point Deep walked in again he had added a humble 33 off 56.
For all the delight that greeted the achievements of the morning’s unlikely hero in the stands and on India’s balcony, Jaiswal – like England – had got stuck for a while in what can only be described as a Deep funk.
