The fifth and last match of the five -match Test series between India and England is being played at the Oval, London. Team India captain Shubman Gill made four changes in the playing-11 for this match. Jaspreet Bumrah, Shardul Thakur, Anshul Kamboj and Rishabh Pant did not play these matches. He was replaced by the famous Krishna, Akash Deep, Karun Nair and Dhruv Jurlel in Playing-11. After excluding Cheteshwar Pujara from the team, India has not been able to get any permanent player at number three so far. During this time, Team India has tried many players, but the failure has just failed. Sudarshan was tried at number three in the first Test, then Karun Nair was also tried, but both could not do anything special while batting at number three. As such, a strong batsman is being discovered at number three.
Sudarshan got a chance to bat at number three in the first Test. However, after the defeat in that test, he was dropped from the next Test. Sudarshan could not open an account in the first innings in the headingl, while 30 runs in the second innings. After this, Karun got a chance to bat at number three. Karun scored 31 and 26 runs in Edgbaston and 40 and 14 runs in Lord’s. After this, Karun was also dropped for the Manchester Test and was relieved of Sudarshan from back. Sudarshan definitely scored 61 runs in the first innings, but then his bat did not get runs. He could not even open an account in the second innings of the Manchester Test. Then Sudarshan could score 38 runs in the first innings at the Oval and 11 runs in the second innings.
In this way, Sudarshan’s first international series ended at number three with 140 runs in six innings of three Tests. During this time his average was 23.3. At the same time, Karun did 111 runs in four innings at number three. When Virat Kohli was part of the Test team, Gill was ranked number three. On Kohli’s retirement, Gill was shifted to Kohli at number four and he created history. At the same time, Pant has been very successful for some time at Rahane’s number five. However, no permanent number three has been found since Gill was removed from number three.
Talking about the last 10 Tests i.e. Australia tour, India has tried five players at number three so far. Apart from Gill, these include Devdutt Padikkal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudarshan and Karun. Padikkal was dropped in the next Test after feeding in the first Test against Australia. At the same time, Gill played against Australia at number three in the second and third Tests, but was dropped in the fourth Test. In the fourth Test, KL Rahul was asked to bat in third place. Then in the fifth Test against the Kangaroos, Gill returned to number three.
Then Sudarshan was batted at number three in the first Test against England. Then in the second-third Test, Karun Nair landed at number three. In the fourth and fifth Tests, Sudarshan was batted at number three. In the 21st century, Rahul Dravid and then Cheteshwar Pujara ruled the number three. Dravid scored 10,524 runs out of the 13,288 runs in Test career while batting at number three. At the same time, his successor Pujara scored 6529 runs out of 7195 runs in Test career while batting at number three. However, like Dravid and Pujara, the Indian team is still waiting for the trusted number three.