File photo of Dhruv Jurel and M.S. Dhoni

He might be drawing comparisons with Mahendra Singh Dhoni, but wicketkeeper-batter Dhruv Jurel on March 15 said nobody can quite match up to the former India captain and he would rather focus on carving his own niche in international cricket.

Jurel, who made his Test debut during the recently-concluded series against England, was sharp behind the wickets, solid with the bat and quite instinctive while guiding captain Rohit Sharma during DRS calls.

His assured performance prompted the legendary Sunil Gavaskar to compare Jurel with Dhoni, but the 23-year-old, who is the son of a Kargil war veteran, begged to differ.

“Thank you so much Gavaskar sir for comparing me with Dhoni sir. But I want to say personally that no one can replicate what Dhoni sir has done,” Jurel said at the ‘India Today Conclave’ here.

“There is only one Dhoni. Always was and always will be. For me, I just want to be Dhruv Jurel. Whatever I do, I want to do as Dhruv Jurel. But Dhoni sir is a legend and he will always remain like that,” added the young wicketkeeper-batter.

Jurel called Tests the “purest” form of the game and said getting the India cap was a dream come true for him.

“It (getting the Test cap and getting the man of the match) hasn’t yet sunk in. It was a pleasure to play Tests, the purest form of cricket. I was sure that I would play Test cricket some day and it has been a dream-come-true moment for me.” “I always wanted to play Tests. When I was playing U-19, my goal was to play 200 Tests, which I later realised was not possible,” said the youngster, who at the age of 12, travelled alone to a cricket academy in Noida for training from his Agra home.

Jurel also dismissed comparisons between Test cricket and Indian Premier League as unrealistic.

“(For me) IPL has not reduced the love for (Test) cricket. When I got the baggy cap (India Test cap), it was a different feeling altogether. There is no contest whatsoever (between the two). Test cricket is at a different level,” he said.

On whether he fancies his chances of making the squad for the T20 World Cup in the West Indies and the USA, Jurel said he wasn’t thinking so far ahead. The World Cup is to be held in June.

“To be honest, I don’t have to think much; let’s just control the controllables,” he said.

Jurel also praised the BCCI’s recent move to reward those playing more Test matches, saying it was a “great initiative” but he was still trying to figure out the increase in perks.

It was an emotional moment for Jurel when his father, Nem Chand, who was also present among the guests at the conclave, saluted his son for bringing laurels to the country.

“Dad was in the (Indian) Army. He wanted me to join the special forces and prepare for the NDA (National Defence Academy exams). Dad was disciplined in diet and training.

“(But) he was not in favour of cricket. So I did not tell dad (initially) that I had started playing cricket. He tried to convince me to continue with academics. Then I approached my mother and tried to bring both on the same page.

“Finally, he agreed to get me a slogger bat made of Kashmir willow. When I wanted a kit worth ₹5000-6000, my mom said she would sell her gold chain to get me one,” he recalled a well-documented anecdote from his formative years.

India’s batter Yashasvi Jaiswal. File
| Photo Credit: PTI

India’s latest batting sensation Yashasvi Jaiswal advanced towards a top-10 spot in the ICC rankings for Test batters by climbing three spots to 12th while his compatriot Dhruv Jurel leapfrogged 31 places to 69th on Wednesday.

Jaiswal, who started the series in 69th position, continues his ascent to the top after scores of 73 and 37 in the fourth match of India’s ICC World Test Championship series against England in Ranchi.

Player of the Match Jurel’s scores of 90 and 39 has jumped a whopping 31 places while former England captain Joe Root is back in the top three.

Root, a formerly top-ranked batter, struck an unbeaten 122 in the first innings in Ranchi to move up two places to third position. He also moved up three spots to fourth among all-rounders.

Senior spinner Ravichandran Ashwin’s five-wicket haul in the second innings has helped him narrow the gap with top-ranked Jasprit Bumrah to 21 rating points at 846 after the fast bowler was rested for the Ranchi Test.

Wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav moved up 10 places to the 32nd spot and England’s Shoaib Bashir, who climbed 38 places to 80th, have also attained career bests.

Opener Zak Crawley entered the top 20 for the first time after scores of 42 and 60, while a bunch of spinners have also prospered in the latest weekly update.

The T20I Rankings see Australia batter Travis Head move into the top 20 for the first time after scores of 24, 45 and 33 in the series against New Zealand.

Tim David’s quickfire 31 off just 10 balls in the first match see him move up six places to 22nd and past the 600-point barrier for the first time in his career.

The top six bowlers are unchanged, with Josh Hazlewood the only new one in the top 10 after finishing with figures of 4-1-12-1 in Auckland.

In the ODI rankings, the biggest mover has been Namibia’s Bernard Scholtz, whose hauls of four for 31 against Nepal and two for 15 against the Netherlands in the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup League 2 Tri-Series in Kirtipur have lifted him to 11th position and 642 ratings points, the highest position and points tally ever achieved by a Namibia player in ODI cricket.

File picture of India’s Dhruv Jurel and Akash Deep during net practice. The pair were instrumental in India’s win over England in the 4th Test at Ranchi
| Photo Credit: Vijay Soneji

One is a war veteran’s son who threatened to run away from home if his father didn’t buy him a kit and allow him to play cricket; another, in effect, did run away and started out in another city. A third sold pani puri off a cart, a fourth spoke delicately about how “things weren’t financially strong at home.” They are, respectively, Dhruv Jurel, Akash Deep, Yashasvi Jaiswal, and Sarfaraz Khan who played key roles in India’s victory against England.

There’s more. Aged five, Jurel had an accident that required plastic surgery. A decade later, his mother had to sell off her gold ornament to get him a kit bag. Deep lost his father and a brother in a span of six months and left home because he “didn’t have anything to lose.”

What is sport without stories of valour and spirit, heroism and gallantry? What is a turning pitch or a wrong leg before decision when compared to the days and months of despondency guided by nothing more than hope and a belief in ultimate redemption? What are the odds of finally making it in a country of over a billion people? How many Jaiswals and Jurels have fallen by the wayside because they lacked the guidance or the single-mindedness of these two, and their ability to hold on to their dreams?

ALSO READ | Home run: On the Indian Test win 

There are too stories of the kindness of relatives and coaches, and of the good fortune of having talent spotted and worked on by those willing to back their judgement. Above all, there is the discipline, the hard work and unwillingness to give up by the Generation Next of Indian cricket.

Elements fitting together

So many elements have to fit together snugly like Lego pieces, before success, inevitable and consistent, is achieved. Some little thing going wrong somewhere at an early stage can have a disastrous final effect. When things work out, it is nothing short of a miracle; the butterfly effect can ruin dreams.

Not so long ago our best players came from the cities and traditional centres: Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai. For a little over a generation now, they have emerged from the old backwaters. This continues. Jurel is from Agra, Jaiswal was born in Bhadohi, UP, Akash Deep in Sasaram in Bihar, where, he says, “playing cricket was a crime.”

In recent years, cricketers have emerged from Roorkee (Rishabh Pant), Unnao (Kuldeep Yadav), Chinnampatti (T. Natarajan), Kakarkhund (Mukesh Kumar). Economic migration has seen the sons of brick kiln workers, auto drivers, taxi drivers, weavers and craftsmen change the family fortunes. If English cricket is identified with Bazball, a style of play and a philosophy, Indian cricket today is best represented by Jaisball, after the poster boy of the new generation.

Reminiscent of Tendulkar

Jaiswal’s two double centuries, his compact defence and his confidence is reminiscent of the young Sachin Tendulkar. Jurel’s ability to read a match situation and change gears has something of Virat Kohli about it. When the future existed in the past, there is comfort in the continuity.

Shubhman Gill, already a captain-in-waiting, batted himself out of a slump, with a vital half-century in the chase. Like a comedian who makes you cry in a serious role or vice versa, Gill played against his grain to see India through. The number three slot seems to be his for the foreseeable future.

If the successful transfer of T20 techniques into Test cricket has shown one thing, it is that sometimes a big heart is more important than a perfect forward defence. It is easy to pick holes in the techniques of some of the young batters; old timers will cavil at the manner in which the front leg is sometimes moved away from the line of the ball rather than towards it, but it has worked. The short-pitched ball might be an issue, but here too the heart can triumph over the head.

There are two tests that Indian players have to pass before they can be accepted into the company of the best. The first, and easier one is their record at home. Then there is the record in countries represented by the acronym SANE: South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and England, on pitches where pace, bounce, swing and seam rule.

India tour Australia at the end of the year, and some reputations will be consolidated then. But whatever happens, the initial hurdle-clearing will always remain an inspiration.