Shubman Gill
Shubman Gill. Image Credits: Twitter

India team is leading the Border Gavaskar Trophy by 2-0 against Australia. Rohit Sharma-led side will be up against the Baggy Greens for the third test match at Indore on 1st March. Former Indian manager Sunil Subramaniam insisted that youngsters like Shubman Gill and Prithvi Shaw should be given chance instead of KL Rahul.

KL Rahul
KL Rahul. Image Credits: Twitter

Ex-Indian manager Subramaniam shared his view on KL Rahul’s situation now and 5 years ago-

“You should realize that Rahul, at that stage, was a youngster…but now it’s significantly different,”

“There are players like Shubman Gill, who are just not knocking, but banging on the door. And then there’s Prithvi Shaw as well. How long can you ignore legitimate claims,” said Subramaniam.

The current head coach of the Tamil Nadu team, Sunil was India’s manager and a part of Ravi Shastri’s think-tank in the 2018 BGT series. Rahul in the 2018 England tour scored 4, 13, 8, 23, 36, 19, and 0 in four test matches. Then duo of Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri still picked him for the fifth and final Test, the top-order batter played a devastating knock of 149 runs in the second innings at the Kennington Oval.

Indian top-order batter Rahul has been struggling to score runs, he has gone a past score of 25 just once in 11 test match innings. In the recent announcement by BCCI for the team of the last two test matches, the right-hand batter was removed from the Vice-Captain (VC) post.

Indian opening batter Rahul was dismissed by Australian off-spinner Nathan Lyon in both innings of the last test match for 17 & 1 runs. BCCI released no statement on Rahul’s exclusion from the VC post but the ‘VC’ tag was missing from his name.

The 23-year-old batter, Gill was in top form in limited-overs cricket for India, he also scored a 100 against Bangladesh in test matches in December last year. In the recently concluded ODI series against New Zealand, the young lad from Punjab became the youngest to score a double hundred in a 50-over format.
It will be interesting to see the combination with which team India will go for the rest of the two matches in the series. Former cricketers and media have together raised their voices against Karnataka cricketer’s unimpressive performances for the last few years, especially in the longer format of the game.
Men in Blue needs to win at least three test matches of four test match series in the ongoing BGT to claim the World Test Championship (WTC) final berth.