Shikhar Dhawan grabs his chance to shine on rainy day in Bangladesh

The stars had aligned perfectly for Shikhar Dhawan. The newest challenger for his spot as India’s Test opener – KL Rahul - was struck down with dengue before the tour of Bangladesh. On the first day of the Test, he was greeted by a flat track and news that the opposition had picked only one front-line seam bowler. [caption id=“attachment_2289486” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Dhawan made the most of Rahul’s absence and Bangladesh’s listless bowling. Getty Images[/caption] Dhawan wasn’t going to refuse these gifts. From the moment he cracked Souyma Sarkar through the covers for his first boundary in the fourth over, his third Test hundred had the inevitability of death and taxes. He would finish the day unbeaten on 150 as he and Murali Vijay added an unbroken 239 on the rain-hit first day of the first Test against Bangladesh in Fatullah. While Murali Vijay at the other end treated Sarkar and Mohammad Shahid like James Anderson and Stuart Broad in disguise, Dhawan got stuck in. He thumped offspinner Shuvagata Hom for consecutive boundaries in the sixth over and then went one better in the seventh against Shahid, punching and pulling him for three boundaries from four balls. The first of those three was the pick of the lot – a back-foot punch to a ball on off stump – and it let everyone know that this wasn’t the Dhawan who struggled to score in England and Australia. This was more like the Dhawan who battered Australia on his debut in Mohali two years back. Dhawan was playing with such ease that India’s 50 came up in the 11th over despite Vijay having made just five from 28 balls. Dhawan’s 47 from 38 more than made up for it. For all intents and purposes, the two openers might as well have been playing different teams on different pitches. Mushfiqur Rahim, the Bangladesh captain, rotated his bowlers in a desperate attempt to slow Dhawan down but a confident Dhawan is a hard man to halt. He plundered runs off every one of the seven bowlers Rahim used. Neither pace nor spin bothered him. His eye was in, his feet were moving and his bat was flowing. He brought up his 50 from 47 balls with a deft late cut off Hom and at one stage, it looked like Dhawan might get to his hundred before lunch. The rain put paid to that aspiration but not before Dhawan, on 73, had his one stroke of good fortune. Left-arm spinner Taijul Islam got the ball to turn into Dhawan more than he was expecting. The ball ballooned in a slow arc towards short midwicket where Hom threw himself forward and got his hands to it but the ball popped straight out before he even hit the ground. Rain then held up play for roughly the next four hours. It was only time Dhawan was kept quiet during the day. He did slow down in the 90s, and played out seven dot balls on 98, but brought up his hundred in typical fashion – a sweep past midwicket for four. It had taken him 101 balls but this time there was no exuberant celebration or moustache-twirling, just a doffing of the cap and raising of the bat to the crowd. It seemed to be an expression more of relief than achievement. That might be because Dhawan currently offers India something of a conundrum. He can be devastating on his day but such days have so far appeared infrequently in Test cricket. This is only the fifth time he has gone past 50 in 24 innings (and only the second time in the last 14). To put that in perspective, Vijay, who averages 39.78 to Dhawan’s 42.30, gets to 50 once every 3.67 innings while Dhawan does it once every 4.8 innings. Add to that the fact that he was dropped after three tests in England and for the fourth and final test in Australia - when KL Rahul made a hundred, Dhawan’s position at the top of India’s batting order is nowhere near cemented. This century was therefore not just a relief, it was a necessity. The worry for Bangladesh is that things could get better still for Dhawan, and worse still for them.