Shikhar Dhawan lives and dies by the sword

Shikhar Dhawan scored a duck in the first innings of the 1st Test

Cricket's incorrigible knack of humbling its subjects manifested at the Punjab Cricket Association stadium in Mohali. Teams and individuals have happy hunting grounds where the air spookily whispers their name in the ear of the opposition, every blade of grass reeks their imperishable aura and nearly everyone at the ground reminisces heroics of the yore.

So, when Shikhar Dhawan walked out to bat against South Africa in Mohali, there should have been a feeling of predestination, a sense of déjà vu, an inner calling for an encore. However, far from matching his stellar innings of 187 on debut, Dhawan was introduced to the other extreme of life.

The languid laziness with which Dhawan edged a harmless length ball to first slip could have briefly deluded one into believing that he had been batting on 187 at the time. That shot off the bowling of Vernon Philander, though, stemmed from his own edginess. There was no conviction in the stroke, it was an uncertain prod between a full blooded cut and a punchy square drive.

In anybody else's case, one might have jumped to the conclusion that it was the transition from ODIs to Tests that contributed to the tentative nudge at a delivery he should have ideally left alone that early in his innings. Nagging lines and lengths have forever been his Achilles heel.

Dhawan is politely impartial to all the three formats and has a penchant to live dangerously even when he is at the top of his game. His high risk-high reward approach renders his stay at the crease into a tantalising game of inches, hence highly inconsistent. In a small sample size of 16 Tests, Dhawan has a healthy count of hundreds to his credit.

In between the four hundreds, though, his scores resemble the digits of a Mumbai pin code. After the 187 against Australia, the scores of 23, 33, 13, 15, 29, 19 and 0 were anticlimactic. Was he a mysterious one match wonder, one wondered? Four of the last five innings were his maiden overseas assignment, trial by pace, in South Africa. Dhawan's reputation and belief had been dented.

Then against the run of play at Auckland, he played the kind of innings reminiscent of Virender Sehwag's 83 which set up a record run-chase against England at Chennai. His 115 brought India close to achieving an improbable target of 405. It wasn't nearly as belligerent as the ton on debut, but almost more important. It was a disciplined hundred, an affirmation that he belonged to the big league – despite poor footwork, despite short ball heebie-jeebies. The 98 in the second Test at Wellington was a celebration of that realisation.

‘Outside edge and away moving delivery reunited like separated lovers’

Dhawan's batting is all about rhythm and feeling. A confident Dhawan can plough into bowling attacks as he did in New Zealand. Breaks are his mortal enemy. As luck would have it, a period of hibernation beckoned. Had self-awareness been his strong point, he would have known that he was most vulnerable now. Consecutive tons against unchallenging Bangladesh and Sri Lanka notwithstanding, New Zealand remained the last and the only time Dhawan strung together performances of note.

Like myriad attacking openers, a torrid English summer ensued. James Anderson made a mockery of his lead feet and the tendency to go at the ball without accounting for the prodigious swing. Old habits hadn't been shelved yet, only brushed under the carpet.

Dhawan had now twice faltered overseas and more worrisome was the fact that his modes of dismissals repeated unabatingly. Support staff around the world operate like a secret service that gather, process and analyse every move of every cricketer in the remotest corner of the world. Dhawan's technical deficiencies stood exposed to the bone.

An imminent axe loomed after the Southampton Test, but he was back for the Australian tour as though the selectors were on auto select mode. Did he truly warrant a recall with no increment in domestic numbers? Nobody knows because there was no time for domestic cricket, thus no corrective measures – the peril of a packed cricket calendar, which allows no time for rejoicing or introspection.

Dhawan continued to pummel attacks in shorter formats as realms of form, formats, class and the scales to judge converged. Technical glitches in whites were a strength in blues, camouflaged when he fell again.

While the duck in Mohali ought to be forgiven on the back of two successive hundreds, it's impossible not to notice that South Africa, who are excellent students of an opposition, had the measure of him from the very first Twenty20. For Dhawan, Mohali was not only an example of the great leveller cricket often is, but also signalled the resumption of an old pattern of dismissals. His outside edge and the away moving delivery stood reunited like separated lovers.

To rekindle his kinship with runs, Dhawan must find his feet again, both metaphorically and literally.