Five years before demanding a longer rope for KL Rahul despite his poor form, the legendary Sunil Gavaskar had lambasted the team management for preferring him over Ajinkya Rahane during India’s tour of Sri Lanka in 2017.
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In his column for The Times Of India as quoted by The Indian Express, Gavaskar had failed to understand an in-form Rahane warming the bench for four successive matches. Despite India winning all four of those matches, Rahul’s performances were well below par. Gavaskar taunted the management by saying that stylish looks were being given precedence over run-scoring ability.
“Maybe they should start getting a different hairstyle and some body art done, too, to get picked in the team. [KL] Rahul got yet another chance while the top-scorer of the just concluded One-day series in the West Indies, Ajinkya Rahane, sat out once again,” the Little Master had written.
The Indian trio of Kedar Jadhav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Yuzvendra Chahal played the first three ODIs but were benched for the fourth one. With Gavaskar writing his piece after the fourth ODI, its rationale was linked to this trio because neither of them had featured in the match.
However, Rahane was the only one who hadn’t played in any of those four matches. Rahane, however, was finally given an opportunity in the fifth ODI in place of Rahul. Much like Rahul, even Rahane couldn’t leave a mark in that series.
Did KL Rahul Deserve To Play Ahead Of Ajinkya Rahane?
Having made his ODI debut in Zimbabwe the previous year, where he became the first Indian cricketer to score a hundred on debut, Rahul had missed New Zealand ODIs the same year before playing the England ODIs in January 2017.
Three flop outings against England were covered by a fantastic Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia. When things were going right for him, a shoulder injury hampered his journey. First, he was ruled out of Indian Premier League 2017 before being forced to miss ICC Champions Trophy 2017 and the subsequent India’s tour of West Indies.
Rahane, meanwhile, bagged the Player of the Series award on the back of scoring 336 runs at an average of 67.20 with the help of a century and three half-centuries in the Caribbean. Ideally, one would’ve refrained from dropping Rahane, who had just won his only series award at the highest level.
Having said that, Rahul’s Test form had played a massive role in him being preferred ahead of Rahane in Sri Lanka. Yet to cement his spot in white-ball cricket, Rahul had scored eight half-centuries in his last nine Test innings which included a world-record seven (five against Australia and two against Sri Lanka) in a row.
That said, scoring 28 runs at an average of 9.33 across three innings in Sri Lanka didn’t allow Rahul to play another ODI for more than 10 months. He made his return to the ODI squad in England next year because of a solid IPL 2018 for Kings XI Punjab (now Punjab Kings), where his 659 runs had come at an average and strike rate of 54.92 and 158.41 respectively.
