Shikhar Dhawan’s injury puts Indian cricket in reverse gear again
BCCI
2015 to 2018 was a circus of sorts in India's Test team. Openers - Shikhar Dhawan, Murali Vijay, KL Rahul, and Abhinav Mukund - were in great touch but never were four of them were actually fit enough to be available for selection. It was a state of perpetual influx and, more importantly, confusion.
KL Rahul is in one match, scores half-centuries for fun, gets injured suddenly and out of the team for a while. Shikhar Dhawan crawls his way, navigates through the tough time to set up the base for Virat Kohli’s immeasurable Test centuries, yet a sudden impact injury would rule him out for the next gig. The less talked about the brave Murali Vijay’s tryst with his fitness issues is better - it ended up being a tragicomedy. The merry-go-round never stopped, until India decided enough is enough and pulled up the string in Dhawan and Vijay’s Test career, putting their trust on Mayank Agarwal and Prithvi Shaw. Cricket moved on and moved on too fast.
It was hard to believe if India’s limited-overs squad would ever find themselves in a similar kind of situation, considering eight months ago, India’s top-three had been the most fearsome batting trio in the world. Rohit Sharma sizzled his way to centuries, Kohli batted as a man possessed and once Dhawan got going, it took a blinder to stop his juggernaut. Remember Mohali, remember The Oval? They were envied by the rest of the world, but as we enter 2020, the team finds itself in more of a sordid mess at the top of the order than “the No.4 conundrum”.
Cutting the long story short, Shikhar Dhawan’s presence in the Indian T20 side is a problem and I am in fear of sounding like a grammatically-challenged writer, his injury in the Bengaluru ODI against Australia, which pulled himself out of the New Zealand limited-overs series, took Indian cricket further backward. My contrasting statement - all within one line - might make you wonder but hey, such has been the confusing state of affairs in Indian cricket, this actually makes sense.
When the Delhite took a hit on his left thumb off a Pat Cummins lifter in the World Cup encounter against Australia, he was out of the squad for the mega event, before recovering in time for the Windies tour where he accumulated 1, 23, and 3 - a combined average of 9.00. That was shambolic, especially with KL Rahul - one of the most exciting T20 players of the generation - waiting in the wings to open the innings on a regular basis. The home series against South Africa should have been the tipping point but India persisted. Persisted to see the Delhi opener scoring a total of 76 runs in two digs; Slow enough to put Cheteshwar Pujara to shame.
When Indian fans were desperately crying for an instant solution, Bangladesh came calling and Dhawan ensured to contribute a 42-ball 41. Yes, at a strike rate of 97.83 in Delhi as India lost to Bangladesh, of all teams, in a format the visitors have no clue about. When Virat Kohli was giving corporate platitude talks of India being the best team in the world, he never realised they were carrying a passenger whose time under the sun had all been over and darkness had engulfed the horizon. Could things have been any worse?
Things could have been different had he been dropped straight away, but the Delhi boy made a desperate full-length dive to make his ground in a Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy which led to a "deep cut on his left knee" and subsequently ruled him out of the home T20 series against Windies. KL Rahul opened, sizzled the show, but like he did umpteen times in the past, Dhawan was back smiling in the T20 side after his handsome display in the ODIs against Australia, a format where he is still a superstar and one of the world’s very best. Now that he is out again, caused by his fall on the left shoulder while diving to stop the ball at cover point, things become further complicated. No prizes for predicting, he will return again at some point in the near future, and with the T20 World Cup being months time, this will sound the death knell.
In a similar line, the very problem of trying to accommodate Dhawan means India failed to make the T20 project a linear one - an independent entity that demands divergent thinking and needs them to shun conventional wisdom. By forcibly keeping Dhawan and slotting KL Rahul in the middle-overs, they missed a trick in T20s. If the IPL performances don’t suffice, the first T20I in Auckland was the perfect example of what Rahul could do if he is given a free hand at the top of the order.Â
Let’s get one fact straight - dropping KL Rahul to the No.4 position is a grave injustice to his amazing talent, it also means one spot in the middle-order is consumed which could be used in a more dynamic way. Notwithstanding his amazing half-century today, Shreyas Iyer is not as good in T20s as he is in ODIs which means trusting him too much would be unwise. Someone like Suryakumar Yadav can be accommodated in the side if Rahul permanently moves to the top of the order and India might well find the winning formula for the World Cup.Â
In a parallel world, another failed series would have brought the end of Dhawan’s time in T20 cricket (we can only assume though) but the injury might just delay the inevitable for a few more weeks. It might give the opener some breathing space till he makes another comeback if he thrashes the domestic bowlers at 150 S/R in the Indian Premier League but that is a long upshot. Indian cricket will never emerge as the winner in this battle of confusion if a white line is not drawn now. Shikhar Dhawan has been a great servant for Indian cricket and can continue his services in the 50-overs format, but the time has now come to rethink the future in the most dynamic format of them all.Â
