Mayank Agarwal would be natural opener in white-ball cricket, says Deep Dasgupta

Mayank Agarwal would be natural opener in white-ball cricket, says Deep Dasgupta

no photo

Former India player and cricket analyst Deep Dasgupta has backed Mayank Agarwal to be a natural option to open the innings for India in limited-overs cricket. Dasgupta pointed out that Mayank could easily carry forward the attacking nature from Test cricket into the shorter formats of the game.

Mayank has had a dream start to his Test career with two double hundreds in his kitty with less than 10 Test matches under his belt. However, nearly everyone was drawn to the ease with which he hit six after six en route his 243 against Bangladesh in the opening Test in Indore. Agarwal has 13 hundreds at a strike rate higher than 100 in his List A career, so trying him out, at least as a backup, is not a far-fetched idea.

As things stand, Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan are India’s first choice options at the top in ODIs, with a Rohit-KL Rahul combo seemingly the best combination for T20s. Mayanak was called-up to the Indian squad as a backup option during the World Cup, and if the management decides to go down that route once again, the West Indies series next month seems the best time to carry out the experiment.

India travel to New Zealand after that and it is like that Rohit will take a break to rejuvenate himself ahead of the big away tour early next year.

"It would be a great thing if the Indian team management has Mayank in mind as an opening option. In fact, he is a natural white-ball player, who has wonderfully transformed and adapted to the needs of red-ball cricket," Dasgupta said.

"If you look at Mayank, his talent was never questioned. He always had the range of strokes from drives to the horizontal bat shots. It was just that in the earlier part he was getting out playing cameos, but not anymore."

Get updates! Follow us on

Open all