As India crumbled to 112 all out to Sri Lanka and the moving ball in Dharamsala, many fans and perhaps the team management may have rued Ajinkya Rahane’s absence in the batting order. His technique against pacers and experience in crunch situations was sorely missed on a seaming track, more so in a lineup without Virat Kohli.
However, stand-in-skipper Rohit Sharma admitted that accommodating Ajinkya Rahane in the current Indian set-up will be tough as he is considered a specialist opening batsman in the 50-over format by the team management. Rohit and Shikhar Dhawan are the first-choice openers currently, with Rahane in reserve.
“I think we made it clear in Sri Lanka that he is an opening batsman and we don’t want to keep changing his batting slot. It plays on anyone’s mind not just his... if one’s batting order is kept on changing.
“We have identified him as an opening batsman and that’s the only reason he had to sit out. Having said that we understand the runs he scored in the past few series. But we wanted to give these guys Pandey, [Kedar] Jadhav, Iyer fair amount of game before we start touring abroad. It’s important that they take the opportunity,” said Rohit at the post match press conference after India went down by seven wickets.
The Mumbai batsman who scored four successive half-centuries against Australia, was left out of the playing XI in the first ODI against Sri Lanka, while Shreyas Iyer was handed a maiden cap at No. 3 and Manish Pandey was picked for the No. 5 slot. Neither of them made it count in the middle, with the in-and-out Dinesh Karthik notching up a dubious record of most balls faced without scoring.
However, the team management’s logic left a lot to be questioned as even Kedar Jadhav was out injured. While Rohit asserted that India lost the game with the bat, and not the ball, he didn’t really give a satisfactory response to the questions on the batting line-up except suggesting that Rahane can’t play in the middle order.
India were bundled out for 112 in 38.2 overs, with MS Dhoni providing the sole resistance scoring a gritty 65.
“He has been in that situation so many times and has proved himself again and again. First of all, I never understood why there was a talk of he being in our plans or not. Once he gets runs the whole conversation changes. He showed us again. I wish one of our top order was batting, so that we could have got more runs. But we learn from it and move forward,” Rohit said in praise of Dhoni.
The stand-in captain also indicated that India’s batting collapse was not a cause of concern ahead of the South Africa tour under similar kind of conditions.
“This is a one-day side, I don’t think there is any comparison. With the Test team, we struggled in Kolkata as well but any team in those type of conditions will struggle. I have seen enough cricket and we recently saw Ashes as well, and that was happening there as well,” Rohit said.
However, he also defended India’s inexplicable batting collapse saying that the Sri Lankan bowlers used the tough conditions to their advantage.
“In conditions like these, only one or two batsmen will score, not all batsmen will score runs. I don’t think we played any rash shots, but they bowled at the right channel, kept us guessing all the time and batsmen were made to play all the time.
“We knew conditions were going to be tough but sometimes when you are put in such situations, you have to bat the situation, which means we got to respect the bowlers. This experience will teach us a lot of things as a team. We take it in our stride and move forward. If we are put in that situation again, we will respond better,” he added.
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