Former Indian opening batter Abhinav Mukund has heaped praise on the middle-order batter Dhruv Jurel, who scored an excellent fifty in the ongoing first Test of the two-match series against Sri Lanka in Galle.
Speaking exclusively to Cricinfo, Mukund has credited the shadow tour of Sri Lanka for Jurel and Devdutt Padikkal’s quality show in the ongoing Test series. Notably, Jurel and Padikkal were part of India A’s tour of Sri Lanka recently and had an impressive series.
“For players who are just trying to break it into the side, for someone like Dhruv Jurel, a shadow tour was extremely beneficial. Look at Devdutt Padikkal’s runs now, who also had a fabulous tour. So, these shadow tours are something that I’m very excited about. It’s an important part of development for a player,” Abhinav Mukund told Cricinfo.
“Even though India and Sri Lanka are not too far away, not different time zones, the ball is different. The way they play cricket is different. It’s an island where you’ve got breeze blowing certain parts of the day, you’ve got to adjust to the rain. I think it’s all an experience,” he added.
After opting to bat first, India posted 460/9 in 116 overs at stumps on Day 2. KL Rahul (82), Devdutt Padikkal (167) and Dhruv Jurel (51) were the top scorers in the first innings. Mukund went on to insist that Jurel needs to score a lot of runs to retain his place in the Indian playing XI.
“I really like the look of Dhruv Jurel and I’ve got a lot of time for him as a Test match batter. But he’s really got to understand what it means to be a pure batter. He’s not the wicket-keeper batter in this side. He needs to score big runs for him to retain his place in the side,” he concluded.
