The former Indian opening batter, Aakash Chopra, has displayed his frustration towards the way the team management has handled the experienced middle order batter and the former captain of the side, KL Rahul, in the first of the two Test matches against Chennai at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai.
The wicket-keeper batter wasn’t allowed to bat on in the second innings despite having more than two days to go for the game. KL Rahul hasn’t been in great touch across formats in recent months. A dodgy season for the Lucknow Super Giants in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 found him losing his place in the T20 World Cup in the West Indies and the United States of America.
The Karnataka-born celebrated an excellent century in the first innings of the opening Test against South Africa at the SuperSport Park in Centurion. He also notched up another half-century in the first of the five-match Test series at home against England before picking up an injury and missing the rest of the games.
“KL Rahul should be unhappy with the demotion”- Aakash Chopra
When India didn’t have the services of a pure opener in the longest format, the management decided to promote KL Rahul to the opening position where he did extremely well, especially during their 2021 England trip, when he made a century at Lord’s.
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Suddenly, when India got the advantage of having both Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill, the veteran was pushed down to number five, given the number four slot was allotted for Virat Kohli in the batting order. In that case, Rishabh Pant used to come in the number six position.
But, during the first innings of the Chennai Test against Bangladesh, Rahul was demoted at number six position which is quite low for someone who has batted at the top order for the lion’s share of his career.
The experienced batter has an average of 54 at the number four position in the longest format featuring in two innings. At the same time, he has batted six times at the number six position and has carried a decent average of 30.80.
Chopra believes that there was enough time left in the second innings to allow KL Rahul to bat more, especially after the latter made a great start with 22 runs beside his name in just 19 deliveries with four boundaries.
“Aapne inside open bhi karai, aapne middle order mein bhi karaya. Ab lower-order mein bhej diya aur batting ka mauka mila toh aapne unko poora samay nahi diya. Agar wo is baat se nakhush ho toh woh hone bhi chaiye jaise mai aur aap (Saba Karim) hai.” (You made him open the innings and then asked him to become a middle-order batsman. Then, you pushed him in the lower order and when it was his turn to bat, you didn’t give him enough time. If he is unhappy with the decision of declaration, he should be just like me and Saba Karim.) The former opening batter of the Indian team was questioned during his commentary stint.
The Uttar Pradesh-born also shared a post on ‘X’ (formerly known as Twitter), where he criticized the decision of the Blue Brigade not to enforce a follow-on and let the batters bat but apart from KL Rahul.
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“Might be slightly unpopular but here it is anyway— India had the option of enforcing the follow-on but it chose not to…because it was worth giving the batters another go. After all, it’s the first test of a long Test season.” The right-handed opener wrote.
“India had the option to allow Rahul (who was looking very good) to fill his boots too. But they chose not to. If runs were important for the first 5 batters, why wasn’t it the case for a pure batter batting at 6? #IndvBan,” His post read further.