Team India face a critical KL Rahul question ahead of Champions Trophy semi-final
Ironing out those issues will be essential if the team wishes to overcome their struggles against Australia, who despite missing some key personnel, have been tremendous in the tournament, with several of their second-string players having the potential to oust their opponents, especially when the stakes are high.
India opted for a four-spinner strategy that paid rich dividends in the previous game. However, the arsenal of tweakers that the side have at their disposal arguably necessitates the inclusion of a specialist wicket-keeper in Rishabh Pant. Kane Williamson anchored the Kiwi innings to perfection with an 81-run knock, but KL Rahul behind the stumps provided him two breathers with dropped opportunities, which invited the criticism of the commentators.
“A tournament like the Champions Trophy is determined by fine margins and India cannot be letting chances like these slip away. Fielding errors deteriorates the morale of the whole side,” Navjot Singh Sidhu said in commentary after one such error.
The inspired selection of Varun Chakravarthy was a game-changing move for India, as the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) star returned with a five-wicket haul on his debut appearance in the tournament. Chakravarthy was spot on with his lengths, not deviating much with the line, maintaining a stump-to-stump approach that gave little away to the Kiwi pacers.
Though he was successful in producing timely wickets, there were more than one occasions of KL falling short of reading his deliveries, leading to startling reactions from Virat Kohli and Rohit on the field. Similarly, Kuldeep was successful in outfoxing both the Kiwi batters and the Indian keeper too, raising concerns if Team India is missing a trick by not having gloveman Rishabh Pant behind the stumps.
While KL has improved his wicket-keeping considerably off late, few teams go in with a makeshift alternative on a front as specialised as this when they have other adept professionals in the hut.
Moreover, understanding the likes of Varun and Kuldeep is no mean task, whereas KL missed a chance off Axar too against the Kiwis. Ravindra Jadeja is extracting sharp turn and grip off the Dubai surface and the aforementioned circumstances further corroborates the requirement of someone who would not be caught wanting, especially when the totals being scored are modest given the slow and sluggish surface in Dubai.
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KL did not have a fine day with the bat too. While the team management has been astonishingly shuffling around his batting order, dropping an out-and-out opener to the No. 6 spot, he scored 23 off 29 with a solitary four before nicking one off to Mitchell Santner behind the stumps in the 40th minute.
It was the time that the team needed him to accelerate the scoring rate in the backend of the innings. However, there is a finer rationale at play here. One of the primary reasons that Team India have been going in with him at No. 5 since late-2019 is that KL brings a cushion of safety to the middle order given his expertise as an opener, which enables the side to arrest collapses.
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He can then settle in and go for a final flourish after the 30th-35th over mark. Some of his finest knocks in such situations have come in when he has stopped the batting order from falling apart after three dismissals, including his two outings in ODIs against Australia in 2023 – once in the bilateral series in March and then in the opening fixture of the team in the ICC Men’s ODI World Cup 2023 in Chennai. Now, he is being moved away from that responsibility to settle Axar Patel at No. 5, since Axar doesn’t necessarily have the brute force one requires at No. 6 or No. 7.
While Axar’s tremendous all-round value cannot be argued against, it has put KL in a spot of bother since his responsibilities have been tinkered around with exceedingly, which is startling since it has come in the aftermath of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, where even captain Rohit ended up batting at No. 6 for a couple of games after seeing KL deliver promising performances up top. While the team management continues to applaud his versatility, it also raises questions about the clarity of continuity of demands that they lay on a valuable resource of the setup.
To add to that, if Team India are fixated on playing Axar Patel at No. 5, then Rishabh Pant could be a better option to come in after the southpaw to blunt the wrist spin of Adam Zampa.
The Australian spin trio of Zampa, Glenn Maxwell, and Travis Head had put locks over the Indian scoring rate in the final of the ODI World Cup 2023, bowling a total of 18 overs for 83 runs at expense of two wickets amongst them. They could bring in Tanveer Sangha to add another armoury in their spinning department given the way the pitch at Dubai is behaving.
While Shreyas Iyer has shown exemplary poise and promise at No. 4, the middle-order is missing an X-factor who could take the game heads on and counter-attack the Australian bowling in case of a similar collapse.
Both Axar and KL are of the similar mould and Rishabh could be a breath of fresh air, which could compel Steve Smith to bowl more overs with part-timers Maxwell and Head, since they are off-spinners, rather than Zampa and Sangha, who would be conventionally easier bowlers for the likes of Axar, Jadeja, and Pant to attack, given their left-handedness.
Proactivity in reining in Varun’s services despite Harshit Rana delivering decent returns propelled Team India to catch the Kiwis off-guard on Sunday. They can pull off another such move by finally ringing in the services of Rishabh, someone who has had an affinity to pull out the big guns against the mighty Aussies.
