Former Indian batting great and current commentator, Sunil Gavaskar is absolutely livid with the Indian selectors for dropping Ajinkya Rahane out of India’s T20I squad against Australia.
Advertisement
It is a known fact that Rahane is the third opener for India and barring the hiccups in the 1st ODI, he ensured to convert those four chances into four fruitful consecutive half-centuries during Shikhar Dhawan’s absence.
According to Sunil Gavaskar, Ajinkya Rahane’s omission is questionable and voiced his opinion that why he is not selected in the T20I team.
When Rohit Sharma was rested for Windies tour, Ajinkya Rahane made use of the chance to good effect as he garnered as many as 336 runs with 1 century and three fifties to his name.
KL Rahul was picked ahead of Rahane and Gavaskar who took a swing at the selectors pointed out that KL Rahul didn’t feature in single One-Day game and how come he would make the cut in the T20I team.
WATCH : MS Dhoni playing with his pet dog ahead of the the 1st T20
Sunil Gavaskar also went on to add saying that the Selection Committee members should give a strong statement on why Rahane has been dropped despite having so much of credentials.
“Rahane’s omission is not understandable. He just scored four consecutive fifties (in the ODI series) – why is he not in the (T20I) team? Now, KL Rahul is a fine batsman. But he did not play a single game in the five one-dayers. So why is he in the (T20I) team and not Rahane who scored four half-centuries. Some reason has to be given by the selection committee to say that Rahul is such a better player than Rahane in the one-day game, in the T20 format.”
Gavaskar calls for the concrete reason from the selection panel in what way Rahane got out from the shortest format. It is perhaps that KL Rahul’s strike-rate in T20Is is much better than that of Rahane’s. Maybe that’s why KL Rahul won the race and aced into the line-up.
“Therefore, we have picked him. For a man who does not find a place in the last five or six one-day games for India still, manages a place in the T20 (format) when the man who has played all the six ODIs after the fourth ODI against Sri Lanka and scored four half-centuries. So, please explain to me how he (Rahane) finds himself out of the T20 side.”
