Until the start of the fourth ODI in Mohali on Sunday, India opener Shikhar Dhawan went 17 ODI innings without a three-figure knock. In the current series against Australia, the Delhi left-hander had scores of 0, 21 and 1 in Hyderabad, Nagpur and Ranchi.
In the same matches of the on-going series against Aaron Finch’s men, Ambati Rayudu, who is best suited for the No. 4 slot, notched up scores of 13, 18 and 2.
While captain Virat Kohli gives his Delhi teammate Dhawan, who averages 24.5 in the last 17 games before the Mohali ODI, one more chance, he drops the non-performing Rayudu to accommodate KL Rahul while himself pushing down from his customary No. 3 to No. 4.
Dhawan may have used the fine batting conditions to post his 16th ODI century and his career-best score of 143 but that has come at the expense of unfairly dropping Rayudu, who seems to be made the scapegoat at every opportunity.
Rayudu is a far better batsman than the scores suggest. But if Dhawan deserved a longer run, so does Rayudu.
While Dhawan seems to be getting umpteen chances, he is bound to play one big knock on a flat surface like in Mohali, where the Aussies posted a record run-chase to win comfortably in the end.
It was Rayudu, who only four ODI innings ago, won India the match single-handedly by scoring 90. On the seaming Westpac Stadium pitch in Wellington, where New Zealand new ball bowlers Matt Henry and Trent Boult spit fire to reduce the Indians to 18/4, Rayudu played an innings of a lifetime to give them a sizeable total that eventually saw India win by 35 runs.
Rayudu has been considered India’s No. 4, especially with the World Cup not far away. He has played almost half his ODI innings at this position — 24 out of 50 ODI innings — and averages 41.67. He has scored five of his 10 ODI fifties, and one of his three centuries — in this position.
It is also a position that one cannot be experimenting with, especially when the Indian team is looking at these ODIs as a dress rehearsal for the World Cup in England. By dropping Rayudu after three failures, the Indian team has only shattered his confidence.
After the toss on Sunday, retired former India opener Gautam Gambhir reacted strongly to Rayudu’s dropping.
Gambhir hit out at Kohli’s preferences by saying in the pre-show that it was unfair to give 17 innings to one player but drop another after only three failures.
Kohli’s choices don’t just stop with Sunday’s Dhawan’s selection and Rayudu’s dropping. Aware of the dew factor, Kohli’s decision to bat first at the toss was baffling. It was a belter of a pitch and India has done well batting second on the Mohali pitch.
Out of the six ODIs that India have batted second in Mohali, they have won five including the last three — chasing targets of 299, 258 and 286. It was all the more reason for Kohli to chase. His reasoning to elect to bat first was that Australia were under pressure to win and chasing a tall score would have pushed them to the deep end.
Under such conditions, Kohli batting first and thereby exposing his bowlers to the dew is not acceptable.
And, these are the matches that you don’t experiment too much when you have the World Cup round the corner and are in the final stages of finalising the line-up.
By putting Australia in to bat, his bowlers would have had decent grip on the ball to not let the visitors run up a score in excess of 350. Somewhere in the range of 320 was chaseable, with Kohli backing his wonderful run of form and his ability to win matches while chasing.
In doing so, not only are the bowlers demoralised but a certain Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who will excel in the English conditions during the World Cup, will feel let down. Getting a game here and there just because one of the key bowlers needs rest, Kumar is always under pressure to perform. And after going for runs aplenty on flat tracks like Mohali, he is bound to be sidelined for not cashing in on the opportunities.
After all, don’t they say bowling is all about rhythm?