Former India skipper Sunil Gavaskar has lavished praise on KL Rahul and Karun Nair after the youngsters stole the show in the ongoing Chennai Test with some sizzling display with the bat.
In reply to England’s massive first innings total of 477, India were in a spot of bother after losing in-form batsmen Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli cheaply but Nair and Rahul scored their career-best scores to help India score 759 for 9. However, Rahul’s innings ended in a heart-breaking manner as he fell one short of a double-century but Nair made no mistake as he became only the second Indian batsman after Virender Sehwag to hit a triple-century in Tests.
Speaking to NDTV, Gavaskar compared the batsmen with the legendary Gundappa Vishwanathan and Rahul Dravid and said:“There are two benchmarks of batsmanship for Karnataka. One is Gundappa Vishwanath and another is Rahul Dravid. And today what we saw and yesterday with KL Rahul was a combination of the two. We saw the discipline and temperament of Rahul Dravid and the flair and the strokeplay of Gundappa. There was such a wonderful mix of Rahul and Gundappa in both the innings.”
“For a start, it looked as if they were just going to play for a draw, it was Karun Nair when he came into bat he was the one who encouraged,” he added.
“I am so happy that he has joined that rare triple century club and many, many congratulations to him and I hope that he will carry on to get some more runs and more wins for India.
Speaking about Rahul, the retired batsman said: “KL Rahul, in his debut Test, didn’t score runs. There was just three or 4 deliveries that he shaped up against Mitchell Johnson – short, fast aimed at his head. The way he got behind the line that was an indication that temperament wise he would be somebody to reckon with. I am very happy for Indian cricket that we got these two young players who will serve India for a long time, as both of them are in their early 20s.
The selectors will have a lot to think when they sit to pick the Test team in the future. Nair had replaced Ajinkya Rahane in the team after the latter was injured and it’ll be interesting to see whether they back the in-form Nair or go with the experienced Rahane. But Gavaskar insisted the selectors will enjoy such a problem when selecting the team
He said:“For a selector, it is always good to have a problem of plenty. To have a situation where you know for every place you have a replacement ready in case something goes wrong. Yes, it’s a tough call since Rahane got runs against NZ, but you can’t ignore a triple centurion. But as we know Virat Kohli is already complaining of few grey hair, let him have some more.”
Gavaskar also backed the team’s decision to give Nair the time to complete his triple century.
He said:“I think declaration coming at a 300 was right, at one point it was looking 250 would be the right one. But I think it was the matter of getting to the 700, and by the time 700 mark was approaching Nair was batting so fluently that he got to 280-290.
“When someone gets that close to 300 you have to give him that opportunity. 319 (Sehwag’s best score) was not what Virat and anybody would have wanted. Look he is the only second Indian to get 300. So the fact that he got there was enough. This kind of opportunity comes once in many, many years.Having won the series it is only fair that Virat gave him that chance to get to 300,” he concluded.