Prithvi Shaw hits back after unbeaten 240: ‘Whatever detractors say, it hardly makes a difference’

Once the new kid on the block, Prithvi Shaw’s descent into the sidelines was as rapid as his ascent. He was only 18, spotting just a faint outline of a moustache, when he reeled out a hundred on Test debut against the West Indies in Rajkot and was drummed up as the future of Indian cricket.
Five years on, he has endured failures, injuries and rejection. But with a sparkling 240 not out from 283 balls against Assam, his career best score in first-class cricket, Shaw demonstrated that his chapter in Indian cricket is far from over. Rather, his best days could yet be in the future.
Just a few miles away from the Assam Cricket Association Stadium, where India kick-started their build-up to the 50-over World Cup scheduled later this year, Shaw whipped up the kind of thrilling batting that earmarked him for international success. The thrill-a-ball knock — like on his Test debut, he reached his hundred in the first session — was smattered with 33 fours and a six. That is 138 off his 240 runs coming in boundaries, a typical pattern in his batting when he hits the high notes. Resultantly, Mumbai ended the day on 397 for two with captain Ajinkya Rahane giving him company on 73.
Shaw has been driven a fierce determination to be reconsidered for national selection, but his start to this Ranji season was middling. Seven previous outings had yielded 160 runs at an average of 22.85 with just one half-century. He could not muster a single hundred in the previous season either.
But at no point did Shaw give up. “I was happy with the way I was batting (this season), just that I was not getting a big score,” he tells The Indian Express. “But when you are hungry to score runs and doing your process, you will eventually be rewarded. The innings was a result of the hard work I put into my game in the last few years.”
In pursuit of finding his lost touch in the long format — in T20s though, he was in blering form, racking up 332 runs at a strike rate of 181 in this season’s Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy — he lened to his inner voice than seek the advice of too many formers players or coaches.
“I didn’t talk to too many people, but was visualising everything myself. I spent time watching old footage of my batting. I was thinking alone about what was happening and realised it myself what I was doing well and what I was not doing well. I was getting my processes right and was doing everything well. But I knew that sometimes it (runs) does not happen, and sometimes it does happen.”
It happened for Shaw in this match.
Fair-weather friends
As importantly, he shut out all the negative voices in his life. Since his downward slide, he has been a much trolled and ridiculed figure, with several even body-shaming him and making fun of his fitness. But he remained unaffected, barely bothering about them or the people who suddenly left him because he was riding tough times.
“When runs were not happening, people just used to keep talking. I used to ignore them. There is no importance of people who left me during my tough days,” he says.
The 23-year-old told his manager to handle social media. “Whatever detractors say, it hardly makes a difference. I knew what I was doing right, and what I was doing wrong. I was focused on my process and how I handle myself. I am mature enough to know that I needn’t address these people,” Shaw elaborates.
That defiance rubbed onto his batting. He quickly sized up the pitch, realised that the ball was keeping low, “so tried to play as close to the body as possible.”
Importantly, he did not throw his wicket away after reaching a hundred, which he did in the first session, and ground out his runs in the next two. “In the first session, I got a lot of loose balls, that’s why I hit a lot of boundaries and scored fast,” he says.
Shaw’s return to form could not have been better timed, as India are scheduled to play four Tests against Australia. Though Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul are firm favourites to open, and there are Shubman Gill and Mayank Agarwal as back-ups, all four have been horically injury-prone. So Shaw would do no harm keeping himself among the runs and scoring double hundreds. He is climbing back to the summit, renewed and refreshed.