CHENNAI: If you consider the bigger picture, the move to drop KL Rahul and accommodate Dinesh Karthik and thereby play Suresh Raina shouldn’t shake any bricks. The middle-order rumble is what India have been waiting to solve for more than three years. Never mind the nine successive ODI wins they managed to achieve before the series against England. It is easy to pick holes in the batting department and since the 2015 World Cup, their strong top-order has been winning matches with the bat, accounting for 62 per cent of the runs made. But how harsh for a player — Rahul — to miss out on his place, while being in the best of form.
How badly India misses a reliable middle-order showed once again on Tuesday as they lost the series decider by eight wickets. After the early dismissal of Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan’s run-out in the 18th over, India were placed at 84-2 with the Headingley track starting to turn. Apart from Virat Kohli, who made a 72-ball 71, and Dhoni who contributed 42, the English attack drilled bigger holes as India managed only 256/8.
By having Karthik and Raina in the middle, India had two batsmen who were untested in recent times and it showed as the lower-order was exposed as early as the 39th over. Which is why leaving Rahul out made more heads turn.
“Don’t know,” is what Rahul told the BBC’s Test Match Special, when he was asked by the commentators why he wasn’t playing the third ODI on Tuesday at Leeds. On the studio, Sunil Gavaskar raised eyebrows, especially since the decision to bench Rahul came with the series on the line and considering how little Raina has contributed. But what nobody seemed to disagree with was Karthik finally getting a much-deserved look in.
The only reason why the think-tank chose to go with Raina is probably because of him being a multi-dimensional player, capable of quietly sneaking in an over or two if the pitch begins turning, and how this could be his final chance to be in the scheme of things before the door shuts permanently. Once Ambati Rayudu and Kedar Jadhav become available, it will give India more options to chose from. Add Manish Pandey into the mix and there are at least two to pick from. But, India needs to know what role they have for Rahul.
They have their sights set on the World Cup next year and captain Virat Kohli has admitted how the team would experiment with multiple options before narrowing down on their preferred XI. But, where does this leave Rahul? In his short career, Rahul has not played more than four ODIs at a stretch and hasn’t crossed fifty since his debut series against Zimbabwe in 2016.
India have 20 more ODIs before the next World Cup. There will be more experiments in the coming series, but how they accomodate Rahul, capable of playing in the middle-order and equally good against pace and spin will dictate how far India go in the World Cup.
“The way our top order is batting, generally our middle-order hasn’t got the number of opportunities that you would expect. At times the middle-order batsmen have to straight away walk into a game situation. Not all players are playing in all formats. You also have to give some weightage to that — coming back straight to international cricket, and doing the kind of things that are expected of you, especially in this format. So the continuity factor also plays a part, but we are trying to balance each and everything that we could possibly do,” he said.
Brief scores
India 256/8 in 50 ovs (Virat Kohli 71; A Rashid 3/49, DJ Willey 3/40)
lost to England 260/2 in 44.3 ovs (Joe Root 100 n.o, Eoin Morgan 88 n.o).
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