Published: Aug 01, 2016, 03:02 PM (IST)
Edited: Aug 01, 2016, 04:04 PM (IST)
KL Rahul does not get to play a lot of international cricket. The selectors can hardly be blamed for that, for Murali Vijay and Shikhar Dhawan have done reasonably well, complementing each other with their contrasting styles. Both average in excess of 40, which, though not exceptional, is acceptable; and if given long runs, especially in the long winter season that is to follow, they are bound to improve. India have not exactly sorted out their opening pair, but have found a pair that allows Virat Kohli to play five bowlers. That is the kind of confidence Dhawan and Vijay gives Kohli. FULL CRICKET SCORECARD: India vs West Indies 2016, 2nd Test at Kingston
Curiously, despite everything, Rahul has managed to play 6 Tests; 5 of them came in the first eight months of his career (he did not open on Test debut), and he is back after an 11-month hiatus.
Rahul bats beautifully. There are those shaky starts (we will come to that later), but once he gets his eyes in he blossoms; and flows. The balance is perfect, and the strokes (especially in whites) conventional, which makes you nod your head in appreciation.
However, there is more to Rahul than that.
Rahul’s average of 37.63 does not compare favorably with that Dhawan or Vijay, though his 45.56 as opener is the highest among the three. One must remember here that Rahul is yet to play a Test at home.
He has reached double-figures only 4 times in 11 innings; one of them has been 16. In these 8 innings (the single-digit ones and the 16) Rahul has scored 38 runs at 4.75.
It is the other 3 that make Rahul special. He has become the second Indian (after Mohammad Azharuddin) to convert his first 3 fifties into hundreds. And Azhar’s hundreds came at home.
When he has crossed that 16 (his 5th-highest is 7), he has converted that into a hundred. He must have been a first to something, but “whenever he crosses 16 he scores hundred” does not sound a very convincing record.
However, when you think of it, you get the interpretation. It is what coaches have been telling you for ages: when you get a start, make sure you get going. Rahul’s coaches must have told him the same. They might have expected him to pull it off.
What they probably did not expect is this, their protégé making it to three-figures every time they went past, er, 16 (see how difficult my life is, just for that one 16?). They probably did not expect him to pull this off despite the fact he gets to play only if one of the specialist openers are injured, which, unfortunately for Rahul, has not happened at home since his Test debut.
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Not that it has mattered to him. When they took him to Zimbabwe for that annual trip India A makes under the guise of India, Rahul scored 100*, 33, and 63* from the 3 ODIs.
Do note the sequence: agreed, the bowling was not the best, but he remained unbeaten twice, won Man of the Match on both occasions, and was named Man of the Series.
Every now and then you get to play weak teams. There are some who get bored after fifties. And then, there are the Rahuls who know that the only option he has is to cement a permanent place is to convert every start to a big score, irrespective of condition and opposition.
Appetite for big scores has not been a common aspect among Indians. Sunil Gavaskar’s 236 not out remained the highest score by an Indian till 2000-01. By that time every other country had managed a 250. Despite all the humongous career aggregates, despite the flat tracks at home, only 6 times has an Indian gone past the 250-mark; and 4 of them were pulled off by Virender Sehwag, that purist’s nightmare.
It might come as a revelation, but despite their home dominance India have managed only 4 double-hundreds in the last 5 years. Including them, there have been a total of 15 innings in excess of 150; 6 of them have come against West Indies and Bangladesh, which gives a total of 9 against major nations.
India’s 9 is less than Australia (20 scores in excess of 150), England (19), South Africa (11), Sri Lanka (11), and New Zealand; even Pakistan, who do not get to play enough against major nations, have managed 11. This does not make good reading.
| Team | 25+ | 50+ | 100+ | 150+ | Conversions | ||
| 25 to 50 | 25 to 100 | 25 to 150 | |||||
| Australia | 349 | 194 | 69 | 20 | 55.60% | 19.80% | 5.70% |
| England | 370 | 181 | 50 | 19 | 48.90% | 13.50% | 5.10% |
| Sri Lanka | 271 | 135 | 32 | 12 | 49.80% | 11.80% | 4.40% |
| India | 246 | 114 | 35 | 9 | 46.30% | 14.20% | 3.70% |
| South Africa | 235 | 112 | 46 | 11 | 47.70% | 19.60% | 4.70% |
| Pakistan | 207 | 111 | 46 | 11 | 53.60% | 22.20% | 5.30% |
| New Zealand | 235 | 92 | 30 | 10 | 39.10% | 12.80% | 4.30% |
| Data over past 5 years. Performances against West Indies, Zimbabwe, and Bangladesh are ignored. | |||||||
India rank last in conversions from 25-to-50 and 25-to-150 conversions. Curiously, they rank quite well when it comes to the 25-to-100 conversion, mostly due to the high 50-to-100 conversion rate. However, even on that respect, they rank below Australia, South Africa, and remarkably, Pakistan (who have fared better with conversion rates than you expect them to).
Following South Africa’s astonishing drop of late, India (112) are behind only Australia (118), with Pakistan (111) and England (108) hot on their heels. It cannot be a coincidence that the top teams are also the ones with the highest conversion rates.
Despite Ravichandran Ashwin’s remarkable second stint, India are nowhere close to have an all-conquering bowling attack irrespective of conditions (something they never had in the first place). They have to make up for that with massive team scores, which, in the long run, are difficult to achieve without those daddy hundreds.
Vijay has been remarkable in this respect, for all his 6 hundreds have been in excess of 139. With Rahul joining the fray (perhaps at No. 3, mostly because of Cheteshwar Pujara’s sub-par overseas numbers), things do look better.
India need KL Rahul. They need him more than they are probably aware of. Once Kohli’s once-in-a-lifetime form reaches an end (it has to, at some point of time, he is human, after all) India will need those ‘daddy hundreds’, more so if they are keen on five bowlers.
Even if one ignores Rahul’s conversion rate, how can one ignore the fact that he has made the most of the limited opportunities he has got?
(Abhishek Mukherjee is the Chief Editor at CricketCountry and CricLife. He blogs here and can be followed on Twitter here.)
