Sydney, Jan 5: If K L Rahul was looking for an assurance after essaying perhaps three of the worst shots by a debutant Test batsman, he would have found them in the words of the now-retired Test captain MS Dhoni shortly after the drawn Melbourne Test.
“We are not deciding on him depending on just this one match, we will have to give him more matches and he is definitely someone who looks good,” he said when asked about what he made of Rahul’s debut.
You would have forgiven the right-hander when he first swept Nathan Lyon in the first innings and the resultant top-edge was floored by Peter Siddle.
You may blame it on nervous energy – it was a Boxing Day Test, the venue was the fabled Melbourne Cricket Ground where even empty seats intimidate you more than a full-house stadium in England or New Zealand, he was batting at No 6 instead of his usual opening slot and he had been handed a Test cap ahead of the experienced Suresh Raina.
When he repeated the same shot off the very next ball, this time to only get out, you may have thought he had suffered brain-freeze. If you were frustrated with the manner of his batting, you would have been seething in anger when he miscued a pull off Mitchell Johnson in the second innings. Rahul had been sent ahead of Cheteshwar Pujara at No 3 and he had thrown away a golden opportunity just like that.
It’s of course easy, and even justified to some extent, to get infuriated with his approach to batting but the team management may well give him another go for he is too good a player to be cast aside after just one bad show.
During India’s first practice session after the third Test here at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Sunday, Rahul got another extended run in the ‘nets’ after starting with the first batch. After finishing with his batting stint, the 22-year-old had a long discussion with team director Ravi Shastri whose suggestions obviously carry a lot of weight in the dressing room. Often, what you see during India’s practice sessions is not what you get, but still it was an encouraging sign from the batsman’s point of view.
For those who have seen Rahul play for various age-group sides of Karnataka, his home State, it was bizarre to see him bat the way he did. It didn’t make any sense because it was just not him.
When he raked in over 1000 runs during Karnataka’s victorious Ranji Trophy campaign in the last season he hardly played a stroke in anger; even when he had gone past the three-figure mark on three occasions. He is a level-headed person and has an unflappable temperament. That’s why he has had so much success as an opener. Yes, he does like to keep himself busy but not necessarily by playing extravagant shots. Maybe, as Dhoni pointed out, he just wanted to play the release shot and get going.
“We shouldn’t really judge him on just one performance,” Dhoni had stressed. “He is someone who really looks very compact and good. And this is the era of cricketers where they want to play the shots to get out of pressure situations. It can be taken as a positive and also he is someone who loves playing his strokes, so overall I was quite happy with his approach. It didn’t pay him in this game but he is definitely someone for us to look ahead in the future,” he had reasoned.
Fair point. If those shots had come off well, people would have been appreciating his positive attitude for a debutant but the problem is when they don’t you look awful and you really have no excuse to offer. Rahul should back his ability and play his natural game which is to play the ball on its merit and not fall for the bait.
In the first innings, Steven Smith had brought the field up and asked Lyon to toss up the ball to lure the batsman into clearing the field and in the second innings Johnson perhaps played on his ego and did him in with a bouncer. Hopefully he would have learnt his lessons and bat more with some responsibility, if he gets another opportunity to play.
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