MUMBAI: MS Dhoni. Dhoni. Dhoni. Dhoni. Kedar Jadhav. Hardik Pandya. Pandya. Pandya. Dinesh Karthik. India began the 2019 World Cup with an established No. 5 in Dhoni. By the time the semifinal came around, they had reduced that position to a carousel. In testing conditions, Karthik was essentially used as a shield in the last-four encounter against New Zealand. It predictably backfired.
While some level of flexibility is welcome in the middle-order, using four different players across nine matches in 2019 betrayed a sense of being unsure. That state of flux was extended to the No. 4 as well (there were four No. 4's used across the nine innings as well). They began the tournament with KL Rahul in that position. They finished with him as an opener while Rishabh Pant, who didn't start the tournament, finished it as No. 4. In between, they also played Vijay Shankar and Hardik Pandya in that role as the linkman between the top and the middle-order. Their plans seem to be clearer this time out. Whatever the score, Shreyas Iyer is the No. 4 and Rahul is the No. 5. While the former has walked in at 2/1 or 2/132, the latter has been their man friday at No. 5 irrespective of whether it's 2/3 or 3/156. Considering it would have been easy to lose faith in Rahul following the injury he picked up at the Indian Premier League (IPL), the team management deserves a pat on the back for sticking with him. It was a plan they put in place over the last 18 months or so (no Indian batter has played in that position more times than him in this format since the start of 2022) and he was exactly what they wanted.
An all-terrain batter capable of facing the new ball in case of a collapse as well as facing the spinners from both ends. It's a plan they were anchored to after Pant's car crash at the end of last year. Rahul's keeping skills plus his middle-order chops meant he was an automatic choice in the XI, at the expense of Ishan Kishan despite the latter being a left-hander. At the World Cup, the benefits of a long-term plan have come to fruition. Even though Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have scored more than 50 per cent of all of India's runs, Rahul has made some crucial contributions. His unbeaten 97 against Australia set his tournament up while his 39, all of it coming in the company of Rohit, against England came at a time when a partnership was the need of the hour. What Rahul contributes to this team is an insurance policy against the spinners. Even if he does like to play the big shots versus that bowling type, he's happy to play the waiting game. One only needs to remember what happened in that first game against Adam Zampa. When the leg-spinner was introduced in the 18th over, the game was very much in the balance. The hosts were 56/3 and it was a surface assisting the spinners. But Rahul brought his touch play as he caressed three fours between the keeper and point. A big statement had been made. Post that, the threat of Zampa was nullified. Out of the 216 runs he has made at this event, 118 have come against spinners from 147 balls (average of 118 while striking at 80.2). Can he be more destructive? Yes, but that's beside the point. He's doing what the management wants him to do; a steady hand at the till. It's highly possible that Rahul will not be making any team of the tournament if it's drawn up now (there have been better keeper-bats and Heinrich Klassen is the de-facto No. 5) but that's to miss his influence in this team. Some credit must also go to the 31-year-old. Since coming back into the national set-up post that injury while playing for Lucknow earlier this year, he has made 111*, 39, 19, 58*, 52, 26, 97*, 19*, 34*, 27 and 39. For a guy who had become a lightning rod, he has turned it around in a very short span. The key to that was shutting the outside noise that was telling him all sorts of things. "I have put a lot of effort in this," he had said before the England game at Lucknow.
"I tried to address it. Outside noise for a long time, I thought it won't affect me, but in the last year or so, it started affecting me. And then I realized that I will have to work on it. And when I got time, outside of the game, I tried to work on that side - mentally you got to get a lot stronger, a lot more thick-skinned. So yeah, so that really helped me being away from the game." Not logging on to social media was part of that process. An underrated aspect of Rahul's World Cup has been his keeping. You see the way he has kept and it's clear that he put some focused work on it during his time away from the game. "The medical team at the NCA felt like - with the kind of injury I had, the difficult part would be wicket keeping more than the batting," he said.
"The things that I've worked much more harder on are my fitness and my wicket keeping. Then came batting so it was in that order. So, I did work a lot on my wicket-keeping there and yeah, even when I've come back here, I've spent a lot of time wicket-keeping. I feel like that requires a bit more time and effort from my side." Even the usually phlegmatic Rahul Dravid was all praise for his namesake. "When we first decided that he would keep and we wanted to have that kind of option with him, we thought we would build him up to this tournament by giving him game time and building him up. But unfortunately, due to his injury, he actually couldn't keep for a while," he had said before the New Zealand match at Dharamsala. "But the way he's come back, the way he's worked hard, even in his injury..." He isn't the first name on the team sheet but he's a very important part of the jenga. Some turnaround, then, for the keeper-batter.
