How Rajat Patidar earned his selection to India's Test squad

Since 2000, only six Indians have made their Test debut after turning 30. Rajat Patidar could be the seventh, and only the second specialist batter after Suryakumar Yadav, if he earns his Test cap during the series against England beginning in Hyderabad on Thursday.

Called up late as a replacement for Virat Kohli in the squad, Patidar has grown up batting at Nos. 3 and 4 for Madhya Pradesh for much of his first-class career. His numbers in red-ball cricket are impressive: 4000 runs in 93 innings at an average of 45.97, with 12 centuries and 22 half-centuries. Over nine years of domestic cricket, he has gained a reputation of being a batter for tough surfaces.

Patidar's composure has impressed Chandrakant Pandit, the Madhya Pradesh coach. Pandit's old-school coaching methods have often divided opinion, even though he's produced results, but for someone as hard-nosed as Pandit to say he simply let Patidar be speaks volumes about the player's maturity.

"Before every game, I have a whiteboard where I list out strengths and weaknesses of every batter and what I feel they need to work at the nets," Pandit had once said. "While going through this at our meeting, one of the players innocently remarked, 'Sir you've missed out Rajat's name'. I told him, 'rehne do, woh sambhaal lega. Uska chinta nahi hai. (let it be, he will manage. I'm not worried about him)'."

Patidar was sidelined for much of 2023 because of an Achilles injury that required surgery in London and wondered if he'd missed his big chance. Now, his career graph has surged to an unprecedented high, having made his ODI debut in South Africa in December.

Last week, Patidar made 151 off 158 balls in India A's innings of 227 in the first unofficial Test against England Lions in Ahmedabad. Before that, he smashed 111 in a two-day fixture against the same opponents. This wasn't him trying his hand at Bazball.

It is just who Patidar is. For him, batting is all about the "feel".

"I don't judge myself on performance," he had told ESPNcricinfo after helping Madhya Pradesh win their maiden Ranji Trophy title in June 2022. "I need to get that batting feel - the shots are good, the balance is there, the head is in the right position - till I don't get that feel I don't feel I'm in good form. Obviously it's every batter's job to score runs, but for me, if I feel good about my batting the runs come automatically."

Another strength of Patidar is his ability to deal with setbacks. Four days after finding no takers at the IPL 2022 auction, he began the 2021-22 Ranji season with twin fifties on a rank turner against Gujarat to help Madhya Pradesh win despite conceding a first-innings lead. The crunched nature of the group stages - thanks to the effects of Covid-19 - meant each team had just three matches and every one was crucial. Patidar scored 335 runs in four innings at an average of 83.75.

Patidar was in the middle of planning his wedding in May when he got a call from Mike Hesson to join Royal Challengers Bangalore as an injury replacement. Within 24 hours of the call, he had postponed his wedding and was on the plane to IPL 2022, where he became the first uncapped Indian to hit a century in a playoff game.

That knock at Eden Gardens against Lucknow Super Giants was followed by a half-century in Qualifier 2 against Rajasthan Royals. He finished that IPL season with 333 runs in eight innings at a strike rate of 152.50. A week after that breakthrough IPL century, Patidar was playing for Madhya Pradesh in the Ranji Trophy knockouts, hitting 323 runs at 80.75, including a match-winning hundred in the final against Mumbai.

He had scored nearly 1000 runs across formats over three months and passed 50 in every knockout game he played. It was around then that his reputation of being a big-match player gathered momentum.

"He's a class player, a superb touch player," Amol Muzumdar, who was Mumbai's coach in that final, had said. "His bat flow was really good. I enjoyed… I mean didn't 'enjoy' enjoy it, but loved the way he approaches batting. It's clean. He's a good player and I'd like to congratulate him for getting a Ranji Trophy final hundred. Not many achieve that."

Patidar made his India A debut later that year, against New Zealand A at home, and hit two hundreds in three red-ball games. Those performances have been the springboard to where he is today.

It's a landmark moment in the life of someone who had wanted to be a fast bowler, but a lack of opportunities - he didn't play age-group cricket for Madhya Pradesh until 18 - meant he had to try and do something different. He switched to offspin, "basically to do anything to find a place in junior cricket." But when an anterior cruciate ligament injury forced him to rethink his choice of discipline, he turned to batting after working with Amay Khurasiya, the former India batter and MP captain.

Patidar marked his first-class debut with a hundred against Baroda. He followed that with another century on a rank-turner in Gwalior, where offspinner Jalaj Saxena took the second-best figures in Ranji Trophy history to win Madhya Pradesh the game inside three days.

Patidar made 113 off just 131 balls in that game, a knock he rates as among his best. "It was turning square, so you could either survive or look to score quickly," he had said. "I thought while I'm in it, I should take the game forward and score runs. It's not like I didn't trust my defence, but the situation demanded that I look to be positive. Everything clicked."

With Shubman Gill, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer and a wicketkeeper likely to form India's middle order in the first Test against England in Hyderabad, Patidar might have to wait for his opportunity. But should the need arise, India can call on a seasoned 30-year old who's played high-pressure innings in tough spin-friendly conditions.