Philander and Rabada threatened the edges, but India’s new opener saw them off and stamped his authority on SA’s attack

Karthik Krishnaswamy in Visakhapatnam02-Oct-2019By a strange quirk of fate, Rohit Sharma was batting on 115, and not 114 or 116 or any other number, when rain brought an early end to the first day’s play in Visakhapatnam. Because he was batting at that particular score, the top of this Statsguru table said this:RG Sharma = DG Bradman.ALSO READ – Stats: Rohit emulates Bradman with 98.22 home averageOn his first day as Test opener, Rohit lifted an already mighty home record to new heights. Rohit is among the most polarising figures in Indian cricket, and his detractors will greet his home record with faint praise at best and derision at worst. But while Wednesday’s innings came on one of the flattest first-day surfaces seen in India in recent years, against an attack not necessarily built for these conditions, it was an innings of method. And you need a method to open the innings in Test cricket, whether you’re in Cape Town or Visakhapatnam.Rohit Sharma averages as high as Don Bradman in home Tests•ESPNcricinfo LtdThere was a bit of moisture in the topsoil early on, and getting through the first half-hour was a genuine test for Rohit and Mayank Agarwal. With the ground bathed in sunshine, it was already clear that the pitch would be no friend to the fast bowlers in the longer term, but things were happening for now, whenever Vernon Philander and Kagiso Rabada landed the new SG on its seam.There were early boundaries for both batsmen, Rohit getting off the mark as a Test opener with a back-foot caress through point off Rabada. But the remainder of the first half-hour’s highlights belonged to the bowlers.ALSO READ – Wasim Jaffer to Rohit: Play straight and compactPhilander beat Rohit’s outside edge twice in the third over, having first jagged one back and hit his front pad via the inside edge. Rabada beat Agarwal’s bat twice in a row in the next over. An inducker from Philander missed the top of off stump by six inches after Rohit ignored it, and then Rabada squared Agarwal up, the ball flying off the leading edge between third slip and gully. In his next over, Rabada had a loud call for lbw turned down against Agarwal, the ball seeming to have done too much to hit the stumps.In the first half-hour, Rohit’s control percentage was 72.73, and Agarwal’s 73.08.Agarwal had faced this sort of test – though not necessarily from bowlers of this quality – plenty of times in the past. The reverse, crudely, held true for Rohit, and he was beginning to answer some of the new-ish questions he was being asked. To Philander, he began stepping down the track and across his stumps in a ploy to minimise the danger of his old bugbear, the lbw. South Africa were beginning to pose immediate counter-questions, with Quinton de Kock coming up to the stumps to force Rohit back into his crease.And then, almost abruptly, the tone of the game changed. The PA system may well have boomed out this announcement: Welcome to India, fast bowlers from faraway lands. Your time is over.If this was the typical day-one Indian pitch, it was typical in the most exaggerated way. There was a small window of help for the fast bowlers with the new ball, and then, almost literally, nothing. For the spinners there was only slow turn and a meagre amount of bounce. Nowhere near enough to threaten the shoulders of the bat, but not so low that the batsmen couldn’t play their shots.Playing those shots, Rohit later said, was crucial on this kind of surface.”I was very clear in my mind as to what I wanted to do out there,” Rohit said at the press conference. “No matter what conditions you play anywhere in the world, at least the first few overs will do something with the red ball or white ball, whatever it is. You’ve got to focus on basics at that time, playing closer to the body, leaving the ball.”We have played so much cricket in India, we know personally, I know what happens after seven or eight overs. The shine of the ball is gone. It’s so humid out there. The ball doesn’t swing much thereafter. After that it’s about playing your game and taking the game forward.”Because it’s a slow and low pitch, it’s very crucial you don’t get stuck at any point. You need to keep taking the game forward. That is what my thought process was while I was batting. I’ve played enough cricket in India to understand that. I have played a lot of first-class cricket as well. I know the conditions, I know how difficult it gets once you get stuck. The runs don’t come by, the fielders are [saving the single]. So you’ve got to try and find those gaps.”Once the new-ball movement had worn off, South Africa sought to keep some control over proceedings with in-out fields. Rabada, for instance, had a slip and two gullies in the 12th over, but also a deep square leg, who quietened the cheers that instinctively greeted a pull from Rohit.Rohit Sharma joins Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul and Prithvi Shaw in exclusive list•ESPNcricinfo LtdAs long as the two quicks and Keshav Maharaj, South Africa’s lead spinner, were bowling, South Africa kept the openers in some sort of check. At the start of the 19th over, when the fourth bowler, Dane Piedt, came on, India were 46 for no loss.For Piedt, Faf du Plessis set the kind of field that has brought Maharaj, by his own estimation, 40% of his wickets: slip, short extra-cover, mid-off, short leg, catching midwicket, straight midwicket, deep midwicket, square leg and long-on. Not too many areas for batsmen to target in front of the wicket, but wide-open spaces behind the wicket, asking his offspinner to attack the stumps, inviting the batsmen to play the cut and the fine sweep.ALSO READ – Keshav Maharaj interview: I’d like to think if I do well I pave the way for other SA spinnersThe plan might have brought some reward on another day. On this day, though, it only brought a scattering of tenuous what-ifs. Agarwal shaped to cut Piedt in his first over, and then, with the ball keeping low, adjusted late to jab the ball to mid-off. In Piedt’s fourth over, by which time he was bowling around the wicket, Rohit tried to sweep and missed. The lbw shout was muted since the ball pitched outside leg stump.When Senuran Muthusamy, the debutant left-arm spinner, replaced Piedt in the penultimate over before lunch, du Plessis kept a similar field, with square leg only marginally behind square and no other fielder in that quadrant. Rohit went for the fine sweep, top-edged it, and the ball ballooned just out of reach of square leg diving desperately to his right.Amidst all that, both batsmen went after Piedt, using their feet to him and going over the top, unmindful of the man at long-on. Agarwal perhaps got too close to the pitch of the ball, but still managed to get the desired elevation with a neat bottom-handed shovel into the sightscreen. Rohit didn’t get anywhere near the pitch of the ball, but he held his shape and monstered the ball high over wide long-on.On this kind of pitch, batsmen could make those adjustments. Rohit and Agarwal kept stepping out to Piedt whenever he came on, but treated Maharaj with far more respect. Piedt didn’t necessarily bowl outright bad balls, but he perhaps bowled a shade slower through the air than Maharaj, with fewer revolutions on the ball, and was, moreover, turning the ball into the right-hand batsmen. Maharaj went for 66 in 23 overs, Piedt for 43 in seven.Rohit said there was no particular plan to target Piedt, even if it seemed so from the outside.”No, nothing in particular. We played a few overs of both the spinners by that point and we realised that the ball is not turning much and there is not much bounce. We wanted to use our feet and get towards the ball, get closer to the ball. And then, obviously, those are my shots that I play and, like I said just now, I wanted to back myself and back my game.”What you saw today is pretty much about what I do. That is pretty much my batting, so sticking to my template was very important and that is pretty much what I did today.”As the post-lunch session wore on, Rohit’s strokeplay began assuming that familiar, Inzamam-esque air of sleepy authority. Rabada sent down a pair of short balls, four overs apart, both sitting up resignedly and awaiting their punishment. Rohit punched the first through cover point, and pulled the second well in front of square.Then, just as the skies were beginning to darken, and just before they would deprive the holiday crowd of a final session, came a shot that might have made up for it; a flat sweep for six, off Maharaj, bat meeting ball in line with middle stump and hitting it against the turn, a difficult shot made to look insolently easy.We’ve seen all this before, of course. This wasn’t an innings that revealed anything new about Rohit Sharma, the Test batsman, or told us anything about the future of Rohit Sharma, the Test opener. It did, however, remind us of Rohit Sharma, the quality Test batsman.