Easwaran was in splendid form before the Australia A tour, scoring 4 hundreds in his last 6 first-class matches, while Rahul, who hasn’t opened since February 2023, has just 2 fifties in the last 5 Tests to his name.
Who’ll bat alongside Yashashi Jaiswal in Perth? We are two weeks away from the first Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) Test, and no one’s got a clue. India cricket team’s captain, Rohit Sharma, might be unavailable due to personal reasons. In his absence, Abhimanyu Easwaran was thought of as his replacement. However, his returns have been extremely slim in the ongoing India A vs Australia A series.
Easwaran lets himself down
A prolific scorer in domestic cricket, Easwaran has disappointed so far. In the first unofficial Test in Mackay, he scored just 19 runs. Today, Easwaran had a golden opportunity at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), but he recorded a 3-ball duck. The ball he got was vicious. Michael Neser got the delivery pitched short to jump up at Easwaran. Expect the ball to be stomach-high; it almost got to his shoulder. Easwaran or anyone couldn’t have been ready for that ball. But, in the end, people and perhaps even the management would view it as a failure. He might not get many chances to represent Team India, and he might have missed one of those chances one fears.
Gaikwad, out of the picture?
The other option was Ruturaj Gaikwad; he too, like Easwaran, opened in the first match and failed. However, at the MCG, he came at 4. With Rohit Sharma potentially missing out, it wouldn’t have been a shock that Gaikwad was included in the squad and perhaps even opened in his absence. But, now that he’s been demoted to number four, one can’t see him bat up top in the BGT 2024-25.
KL Rahul, back as opener
Of course, let’s get to the reason why Gaikwad was moved down the order. Reports had suggested that KL Rahul, who along with Dhruv Jurel was added to the squad for the second India A vs Australia A match, would open the innings at the MCG. That turned out to be true. Only for Scott Boland to end his stay in the middle after just four balls. Similar to Easwaran, he got a good ball that straightened just a bit from the fourth stump and took Rahul’s edge.
The Indian management making such a change after claiming that they want KL Rahul to bat in the middle order is head-scratching worthy. One can’t forget that Rahul averages under 35 as an opener after a whopping 47 matches and has scored just 187 runs at 20.77 in Australia.
No idea who’s Jaiswal’s partner
What head coach Gautam Gambhir needed was assurance. If even one of the three openers had scored a fifty, he might have gone ahead with him. But, with just one innings left and no practice games scheduled, no one is sure who’s their second opener for the Perth Test. If that doesn’t show how doomed Team India might be for this BGT, nothing will.
India’s squad for the BGT 2024-25
Rohit Sharma (c), Jasprit Bumrah (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant (wk), Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Mohammed Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar
Reserves: Mukesh Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed
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