Will the real Keshav Maharaj please stand up?
Rohit Sharma and Mayank Agarwal might have already scored two centuries each in the series already, but on his way to a third consecutive century of the series is South Africa’s Keshav Maharaj and right now, there’s nobody in the world who can stop him from doing so, not even himself.
Quite an impressive feat, you’ve got to admit. But erm, the only problem is that unlike Rohit and Mayank, he is not a batsman. Into just his third innings of the series, Maharaj has conceded a staggering 407 runs already, which is almost 200 more than any other bowler in the series, and whilst he’s been at it, has taken just five wickets in the process, with each wicket coming at close to an average of 82 apiece.
But this is not the Maharaj we know, nor is this the Maharaj that people expected to turn up ahead of the series. Coming into the series having wreaked havoc on the county circuit - where he picked up 38 wickets in 5 games at an average under 19 - the left-armer was expected to be South Africa’s trump card and their only hope against the gargantuan Indian batting line-up. But what has transpired so far in this series almost beggars belief because let’s be honest, since the turn of the decade, at least on paper, Maharaj is undoubtedly the best South African Test spinner to have put his foot on Indian soil.
Back home, he’d stamped his authority on wickets that were extremely tilted in favour of the pacers and wherever he went - be it Australia, New Zealand or England - he returned with impeccable numbers. Within 12 matches, he had gone past the 50-wicket barrier and astonishingly, he played all of his first 20 Tests outside the sub-continent and yet managed to maintain world-class numbers. The chatter started soon enough. “If he has numbers like these on pacer-friendly wickets, could you imagine the kind of damage he’d do on sub-continent wickets?”.
The first time he put the foot on sub-continent soil was in Sri Lanka last year and he ended the tour with 16 wickets in two games including a 12-wicket haul, which included him scalping nine wickets in a single innings. The legend of Maharaj had grown to ludicrous heights and hence the expectations on his shoulders heading into the series were colossal. The questions that besieged South Africa were all on their batting and none on their bowling, especially spin, for there was already an assumption that Maharaj was going to replicate Nathan Lyon and Steve O’Keefe from 2017.
So what has gone wrong for Maharaj all of a sudden? Is it the weight of expectations that has gotten to him? Or is it just the fact that the Indian batsmen have been way too good against him? In Vizag, the skipper threw him the ball within the first half an hour of the match, a move that served as a testament to the trust and confidence Faf du Plessis had on his spinner. But since ball one of the series, at no point has Maharaj looked in control of his own abilities and has been awry.
In Vizag, he erred in his line and length, dragging the ball too short to the Indian openers and sliding it too wide to the rest. Today, it was once again an exhibition of inconsistent bowling which involved plenty of over-correction and over-compensation. The odd delivery beat Agarwal’s outside-edge, the odd delivery gripped off the surface but in the sub-continent, spin bowling is all about consistency and persistence, and very rarely do you see bowlers reap rewards for occasional genius. As riveting as it is for the viewer to see the odd ball flare up and beat the batsman, in all fairness, it is nothing but a mere scare tactic and batsmen, all day of the week, would rather come up against that as compared to consistent, persistent bowling.
The odd snorter amidst sustained spells of mediocrity was a feature of Maharaj’s spell today and in many ways, it was also a bland reflection of how he’s fared throughout the series. Towards the eleventh hour, he looked so broken and down on confidence that he was comfortably being outbowled by two-Test-old Senuran Muthusamy, who gave the Indian skipper a few nervy moments. The moment where Agarwal raced off from 87 to 99 in just two deliveries smoking Maharaj for two sixes spoke a story in itself, as throughout the entirety of the series, the Indians have treated him as a punching bag, quenching their thirst for runs at will off the bowling of the left-armer.
The problem with Maharaj has not been the numbers next to his name in the wickets column, but his inability to build pressure, support the other bowlers, keep the runs under check and devise a plan for the batsmen to ultimately get the better off them. Had he done all the above and yet ended up with nothing next to his name, he’d have been termed “unlucky”. But now, with his miserable, hopeless showing so far in this series, he instead finds himself guilty of letting the team down and finds himself in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
There is still time, it is still not too late for Maharaj to make a difference and redeem himself but the road to redemption is a long way away and he, for one, would know that he’s let a golden opportunity slip. The man who entered the series as a “Maharaj” is now facing an identity crisis and stands a risk of coming out of the series as a mere “Praja”.
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