India’s opener Mayank Agarwal is on the cusp of entering an elite list. Agarwal has had an outstanding start to his Test career and as he was India’s best batsman in the first Test match against New Zealand, which India lost by 10 wickets. Agarwal had scored 34 and 58 runs in both the innings of the Test match when the rest of the Indian batters had failed to get going.
Meanwhile, Agarwal has scored 964 runs in the 10 Test matches he has played thus far. Ergo, he is only 36 runs away from completing 1000 runs in the Test fold. Agarwal has taken only 15 innings so far and if he manages to score 36 more in the next Test match, he will become the second fastest Indian batsman to score 1000 Test runs. The Karnataka batsman was the highest run-getter for India in the red-ball version in 2019.
Agarwal has had an outstanding start to his Test career.
Former southpaw Indian batsman Vinod Kambli is the quickest Indian batter to 1000 Test runs as the Mumbaikar had scored the same in only 14 innings. Meanwhile, Cheteshwar Pujara and former Indian legendary batsman Sunil Gavaskar had amassed 1000 Test runs in 18 and 21 innings respectively.
On the other hand, current commentator Sanjay Manjrekar, BCCI president Sourav Ganguly and NCA Director Rahul Dravid had all taken 23 innings to complete 1000 Test runs.
Ishant Sharma has been ruled out.
Meanwhile, India will look to bounce back in the second Test match in Christchurch. The visitors were outplayed in the opening Test as New Zealand was the better side with both bat and ball. Tim Southee was awarded the Player of the match as the veteran Kiwis’ speedster had scalped nine wickets in the Test match.
Furthermore, India has coped a huge blow as their best bowler in the first Test, Ishant Sharma has been ruled out of the second Test match due to recurrence of an ankle injury.
