Abhimanyu Easwaran stakes claim for tour Down Under in style

For well over a decade now, Abhimanyu Easwaran has been a man on a mission. And in his quest to earn the India cap that he has come agonisingly close on multiple occasions, he has been a man on the move for the last couple of months as well.

Having recovered from a left hamstring injury in August, he attended a fortnight-long preparatory camp with his Bengal teammates in Kolkata. Abhimanyu then had plans to travel to his comfort zone of DehraDun where his father has built a ground. But incessant rain in DehraDun meant Abhimanyu took a flight to Bengaluru, trained at the Just Cricket Academy on its outskirts for a short personal training stint before joining his Duleep Trophy teammates.

The Duleep Trophy started off on a terrible note – with two bad shots in the opening game. But he flourished in the last two games in Anantapur, notching up a hundred in each of them. The night the Duleep Trophy got over, he travelled all the way to Chandigarh and played two pre-season warm-up games for Bengal against Haryana before joining his Rest of India teammates for the Irani Cup tie here last weekend.

No wonder then that after ploughing it with an unbeaten 151 on Day Three against Mumbai, Abhimanyu had had an extended ice bath. Having been out on the park for every single ball bowled in the match so far, after a brief chat, Abhimanyu preferred to avoid walking up the staircase to the dressing room, instead heading to the team bus through the VIP lounge.

“The tiredness is not due to travel but because I have been on the field for too long. We fielded for almost two days, so I think to come back and bad for a day was really satisfying,” he said.

Abhimanyu – having been a part of the India Test squad twice – along with RoI captain Ruturaj Gaikwad is in contention to be India’s reserve opener for the tour to Australia. And he served the national selectors – Subroto Bannerjee and Shiv Sundar Das present in the gallery – another reminder with a flawless innings.

“The ultimate goal is obviously to play for the country and win games for the country; and especially with the WTC coming in, every game is more like a World Cup game for India in Test cricket. That is the goal, but at the same time I just need to be focusing on what is in my hand,” he said.