The stroke pleased . He watched it fleece the dewy outfield to the fence at extra cover. He punched his fists and raised his arms to the jubilant weekday fans — celebrating his half-century, off 25 balls, on a surface that was not the smoothest to bat. He could have been celebrating the stroke too. Full and wide, his long and muscular arms had to stretch like the elongated flaps of an aeroplane. He bent to get under the ball from Logan van Beek, found the sweetest connection, and it sped towards the ropes, bisecting two converging fielders. Not his most spectacular stroke of the night, but certainly his sweetest — arguably his most perfect.
It was a stroke that captured the varied shades of batting. He hits sixes; it’s his calling card, the reason devotees call him the “aarusami” (loosely, six-master). But his batting is not all about flaying sixes or battering the leg-side arc between long-on and square-leg. He can strum more melodic notes too. He smote half a dozen sixes on a crisp night, but how he set himself up for the carnage is instructive of the batsman he has transformed into — and how it makes India’s batting a truly intimidating firm.
When he strode in, India was in strife at 69/3, having just lost Tilak Varma. had donned the accumulator’s garb against the Dutch’s disciplined spinners. Dube had to resist moments of indulgence. Being a lower-order batsman in a power-stacked batting unit is difficult — either you come too late to make a definite impact, or you must alter the game in a rescue act. Straddling both roles could dishevel a batsman’s mind and methods.
But Dube was well-equipped for the rigours of subduing his instincts. For the first 12 balls, he attempted nothing audacious — nudging singles, defending firmly, surviving a top-edge that ballooned past the keeper and a close lbw shout. A worried Surya wandered over and told him to take his time. Dube obediently nodded; he was in no mood to throw his wicket away. This was the tease before the tempest.
The heady acceleration was round the corner. He surveyed the field like a sniper, working out angles and distances. In the end, most of his sixes soared through the longer parts of the ground. He thumped two sixes and four off three balls. Enter the eternal journeyman Roelof van der Merwe — sledgehammered over midwicket. Flat and quick, near yorker length, but Dube has such brute strength and strong wrists that he could get under it and send it into the stands.
It’s part of what makes him a brutal destroyer of spinners. He hits them through the line, slog-sweeps with impossible rage, punishes the slightest misjudgement in length. He shifts frictionlessly to the back-foot and pummels. Raised on red-soil surfaces, he reads variations adeptly, rides the bounce and chooses his spot — invariably on the leg side.
Understandably, opposition captains throw the ball to the seamers at his arrival. But he is no longer the hopeless suspect to short-pitch bowling he once was. Van Beek tried to bounce him out; Dube pulled him with powerful grace. He tested him with a slower ball; Dube paused and swung him over long-on. Bas de Leede, too, was disdained as his innings reached a delirious crescendo. He knows his primary task is to destroy spinners, but he is constantly looking to improve. “I can’t be the same as what I was. I try to be a little better, a little smarter in the next game. I learn how to be smart, what my strengths are and where I can target those. That is my role — to get the strike rate high in the middle overs. Not just against spinners but fast bowlers as well,” he recently said.
The acceleration was seamless. From five off eleven balls, he breezed to 50 off 25 — 45 runs from the last 14 deliveries. In the final 20 balls, he blasted 61, relying entirely on his percentage strokes. Frighteningly, even on days when the top order stutters, there is Dube and — whose 21-ball 30 was entertaining too — down the order to knock the living daylights out of the bowlers.
This Indian batting unit, like the mighty oceans, does not seem to have a bottom.
