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Opinion

KL Rahul’s Test inclusion everything wrong with Indian cricket

21st December, 2020
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KL Rahul (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
Roar Guru
21st December, 2020
14
1155 Reads

After India’s humiliating batting performance on Day 3 of the first Test in Adelaide, unsurprisingly, some heads were going to roll. One of the players who are most likely to be in India’s squad is KL Rahul.

Rahul is a superstar for India in the shorter formats, but his recall into the Test squad is completely unjustified.

At the end of 21 Tests and the year 2017 coming to an end, Rahul had scored 1428 Test runs at an average of 44.63 with four hundreds and ten fifties. But then everything went horribly wrong for the Karnataka batsman in the Indian whites. Between 2018 and 2019, Rahul scored 578 runs at an average of 22.23, which included a 149 at the Oval.

2019 was such a horrid year for KL Rahul in Test cricket that Ishant Sharma had more Test fifties (one) than Rahul (zero). The writing was clear for Rahul as he would be dropped from the Test team in September 2019. Now how does a dropped player fight their way back into the Indian Test team? By scoring runs in India’s first-class tournament, the Ranji Trophy.

However, there was a slight problem for Rahul. With either Rohit Sharma or Shikhar Dhawan missing Indian white ball series due to injuries, Rahul was playing limited-overs matches for India instead of playing in the 2019-20 Ranji Trophy. With Karnataka progressing to the Ranji Trophy semis and Rahul not in the Indian Test squad in New Zealand, he finally got the chance to play red-ball cricket for the first time since September 2019.

Playing against Bengal on a green top at Eden Gardens, Rahul scored 26 and 0 as he looked clueless against the pace and bounce of Ishan Porel. Fast forward to December 2020 and the Ranji Trophy semi-final is the only first-class match Rahul has played since he got dropped from the Indian Test team. Yet somehow, Rahul finds himself back into the Indian Test squad.

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To use IPL form as a way to get back into your national team’s Test squad is nothing short of a disgrace to first-class cricket. There are so many players in the Ranji Trophy, giving their all to first-class cricket every season to play Test cricket, only for a bloke who averages below 35 in Test cricket to be recalled based on IPL form.

The BCCI was so busy focusing on the IPL, they could’ve had players not participating in the IPL to play in a mini first-class tournament on grounds such as the ICC Academy grounds in the UAE during the IPL so that players like Cheteshwar Pujara and Hanuma Vihari were match fit for the Border Gavaskar Trophy.

Whether Rahul plays in the Boxing Day Test or not, India recalling the Karnataka batsman to the Test has shown Ranji Trophy veterans in Priyank Panchal, Abhinav Mukund and Sheldon Jackson that their runs in first-class cricket hardly mattered. It sets a dangerous precedent in the future to players that their runs in List A tournaments and the IPL will have more relevance for selectors to notice players.

Dear BCCI, don’t make this mistake again. There are plenty of batsmen in India who deserve a Test call up over KL Rahul. Select teams in each format based on their performances in that format, not IPL form for Test cricket. Or else, we’ll be seeing the death of Indian cricket sooner rather than later.

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