Sports
IND vs SL: Rohit Sharma on cusp of joining MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli in elite list
After dominating the T20I series against the West Indies, India will look to continue their winning streak against Sri Lanka in a three-match series, which will also be their second T20 appearance before this year’s T20 World Cup. Skipper Rohit Sharma will be hoping his team can add another hit against the Windies. Virat Kohli and Rishabh Pant were rested for rubber, but India had plenty of options, giving Rohit and head coach Rahul Dravid a headache.
Rohit may have no idea about the perfect team mix, but the seasoned batsman has a chance to join Kohli and MS Dhoni. If the 34-year-old batsman scores 63 in his first T20I match against Sri Lanka, he will become the third Indian captain after Kohli and Dhoni to achieve the feat. Overall, he will be the 10th captain to do so in the shortest time of the game.
Rohit will lead the team for the 26th time on Thursday, and if he breaks the 1,000-point mark, he will be tied with Babar Azam, who reached the milestone in 26 innings. The India captain also has a chance to overtake Martin Guptill as the leading scorer at the T20 International.
He has 66 games in the T20I series against West Indies, averaging 22.00 points per game, while Rohit will go even better against Sri Lanka. He’s just 37 times short of passing Guptill on the elusive roster.
Batsman Rohit may add to his already excellent cap, but the skipper can also lead India to their best T20 Internationals winning streak to date. A win in the series opener would be India’s 10th consecutive T20I victory.
With Suryakumar left out of the T20I series, it remains to be seen whether Rohit Ruturaj will elevate Gaikwad and Ishan Kishan to the top and put himself in the middle. India will also miss the services of Deepak Chahal, who will be sidelined with a hamstring injury. Sanju Samson was included in the T20I squad when players such as Kohli, Pant and Shardul Thakur were rested.
Rohit was named Test captain last week as he led India in all three formats. “It’s a huge honour to be captain of India in all three forms and it’s always a great feeling. I have a lot of challenges to look forward to. When the opportunity arises, I’m happy and delighted to be captain of the team ,” Rohit said at a virtual news conference on Wednesday.
“We have a solid group of people, so we’re looking forward to taking them to the park and seeing what we can do on the pitch,” he added.
Complete News Source : Hindustan Times
Cricket
KL Rahul dangerously close to Laxman territory; to be perished for Sarfaraz Khan and Shubman Gill
To accommodate both Sarfaraz and Gill and stick with their five-bowler formula, a batter from the Bengaluru Test must make way. Ergo Rahul and the predicted axe
VVS Laxman went through the first half of his illustrious 15-and-a-half-year international career with the proverbial axe hanging over him. Despite his magical stroke-play and a well-founded reputation for rallying the lower order to bat above itself, he was forever the first name that sprang to the decision-makers’ minds when they had to drop someone to accommodate someone else. It wasn’t until the second half of his stint with the national team that he had ‘job security’, which automatically manifested itself in an array of glorious, match-turning knocks and earmarked him as one for a crisis.
KL Rahul is now dangerously close to approaching the Laxman territory, though at least in this instance, a case can be made out, perhaps, for why he often seems to be playing for his place. Almost a decade after his Test debut in Australia in December 2014, he has yet to nail down a permanent spot, a result of glaring inconsistency and repeated dalliances with injuries that have left him with a modest average of 33.87 from 53 Test appearances.
Unlike Laxman, who was thrust to the opener’s position for three years from 1997, successive team managements have worked overtime to create space for Rahul. He started off in the middle order in Melbourne against Australia, opened in the next Test in Sydney when he made a sparkling century, continued in that position for a good nine years – around the large pockets when either injuries or lack of form relegated him to the sidelines – and now seems to have found his calling in the middle order, where he was tried out in an almost last throw of the dice in South Africa last December.
In his limited time at the No. 6 position, Rahul has been a revelation. On a spiteful surface in Centurion in his first innings back in the middle order, the classy right-hander made a marvellous 101 – Virat Kohli’s 38 was the next highest score – in India’s 245 all out. Two Tests later, against England in Hyderabad, he waltzed to 86 of the best until a hamstring strain kept him out of the last four Tests.
On his comeback last month against Bangladesh, Rahul showed why he is rated so highly, and therefore why he so frustrates when he chooses to shackle himself mentally, with uninhibited shot-making when India were pressing for a declaration (Chennai) and looking to make up for lost time with a frenetic batting approach (Kanpur) in the two Tests. Kanpur was especially mesmeric, 68 flowing off his bat in a mere 43 deliveries. It was the best of Rahul.
Axe hangs over Rahul’s head for India vs New Zealand 2nd Test
And yet here we are, two innings later, wondering whether he will, or should, feature in the playing XI in Pune, where India take on New Zealand in a must-win second Test from Thursday.
Shubman Gill, him of three centuries in his last six Tests, missed the Bengaluru defeat to the Kiwis with a stiff neck. Replacement batter Sarfaraz Khan made the most of own good fortune with a delectable 150, which makes it near impossible to drop him now that Gill is fully fit. To accommodate both Sarfaraz and Gill and stick with their five-bowler formula which has worked beautifully in the last few years, a batter from the Bengaluru Test must make way. Ergo Rahul and the predicted axe.
One of the few men to have led India in all three formats internationally, Rahul didn’t help his cause with scores of 0 and 12 at his home ground, the M Chinnaswamy Stadium. In the first innings, he was strangled down leg-side by William O’Rourke while in the second, he received a peach from the same paceman operating with the second new ball and was again caught behind. Rahul was one of 11 failures in India’s first-innings 46 and one of seven wickets to fall in 93 deliveries to the second new cherry, but failures past and the logjam created by Gill’s availability have combined to identify him as the most susceptible to the axe.
It’s a cross impossible to bear, but also impossible to ignore just because it is so heavy, so overarching. Rahul is beyond gifted and makes batting appear oh-so-simple, but his struggles to embrace sustained run-making can’t be wished away. He is the eternal team man, much like his celebrated namesake also from Karnataka – both kept wickets admirably in 50-over World Cups 21 years apart, both made attractive and impactful runs during the tournament and both tasted bitter defeat at the hands of Australia in the final – but ‘eternal team man’ can sometimes be an euphemism for the ‘most dispensable’ and Rahul can be excused for thinking that those two lines have blurred beyond repair. Of course, if he is brutally honest to himself, he will acknowledge at least to himself that he too must bear culpability for the blurring of the lines.
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