Who should partner Rohit at the top of the order, Shubman Gill, who has been in superb form, or KL Rahul, India’s first-choice Test opener since 2021? Apart from Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, who should be the third spinner? Is it going to be Kuldeep Yadav or Axar Patel?
These are the questions that the management must address in the coming days. KL Rahul, as the team’s vice-captain, is almost certain to make the playing XI unless Team India follows Pakistan’s lead and leaves their deputy captain on the bench.
Given the number of runs Shubman Gill has scored in the last two months, leaving him out of the starting XI in Nagpur would be extremely unjust.
With Shreyas Iyer out of the first Test due to injury, there is a vacancy in the middle order. India has two choices. They can bat Shubman Gill or KL Rahul in the middle order, or they can give Suryakumara Yadav his long-awaited Test debut.
That’s not all. There is one more possibility, but it has a former India legend concerned. To accommodate both Shubman Gill and Suryakumar Yadav, the management may request that KL Rahul keep wickets, leaving specialist wicket-keeper KS Bharat on the bench.
For many of you, it may be the best approach because KL Rahul is no stranger to wicket-keeping. He has consistently kept wickets for India in the 50-over format.
Former India cricketer Dodda Ganesh, on the other hand, is concerned. In fact, he is completely opposed to a part-time wicketkeeper dining the gloves in the game’s most difficult format.
The former batter slammed the management for even considering KL Rahul for wicket-keeping duties in red-ball cricket in a tweet on the micro-blogging site.
I can’t believe people are seriously considering KL Rahul as a test wicket-keeper. That is the very last thing the Indian think tank should do. In tests, you can’t take chances with a shaky keeper. Hopefully, we won’t see KL retaining, he tweeted.
In the tweet, the 49-year-old expressed his rage and warned Rohit and Dravid not to make the same mistake in the upcoming series. He reminded them that the makeshift wicketkeeper wouldn’t be a bad idea on India’s spin-friendly pitches, where you need someone who has spent his entire life keeping wickets.
What are your thoughts? Should KL Rahul keep wickets and allow Suryakumar Yadav and Shubman Gill to play together, or should the specialist KS Bharat keep wickets?
Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
