KL Rahul's 'coming off age' knock signals dawn of new era
Indian cricket, as much as it has been defined by individuals, has also been identified by factions. Tests? Oh, it was that glorious quartet of Sachin, Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman. ODIs? First, it was Sehwag-Sachin-Ganguly, followed by Kohli-Dhoni and Dhawan-Rohit-Kohli. And T20s? Erm…….
You really have to pull each and every strand of your hairs out to think of a standout duo, or a trio, that’s sustained its success in the format for a prolonged period. There have, however, always been standout individuals: Yuvraj in the late 2000s, Suresh Raina in the early 2010s and even Dinesh Karthik in the latter part of the last decade. But the team has somehow always struggled to find that core, the one faction, that could provide stability and see them through multiple calendar years, bilateral series and tournaments. Basically, to achieve prolonged, sustained success.
They have their own reasons for that, though. When the format was still in its embryonic stages back in 2007, they did not want to draft their senior, older players into the squad and wanted to keep it youngsters specific. Then came the boom of the IPL. On a yearly basis, consistently, the country started producing so many exceptional talents that, at one point, it became a survival of the fittest. The queue was long and the players who came in had a very thin rope, which meant that seldom did the management look to ‘build a core’ or give ‘an extended run’. And then you have the cases of players like Dhoni and Dhawan who, despite being greats in the ODI format, have been serial under-performers in the shortest format and at times have even been a burden on the team.
The resurgence of Rohit Sharma in 2016 - a breakthrough year for him in T20I cricket - threatened to put an end to all of it, but the management’s approach in the format in the last two years - that of resting one of Kohli or Rohit - has meant that the duo have hardly played together since. And even when they’ve done, unlike ODI cricket, the clarity in their partnership and chemistry’s been missing, for there’s no coherence owing to the fact that they’ve not played together in the format for a long while.
Rohit threatened to put an end to all this back in 2016, but now in 2020, KL Rahul has taken it upon himself to get the job done and he is doing it with aplomb. Who could have seen it coming? And this early? After what was happening with Rahul the cricketer 12 months ago? Perhaps no one. But it is what it is, and Rahul is taking Indian T20 cricket to heights it was always destined to touch.
This is a team that, for a good part of six years, in this format, has been crying for a third wheel in the cog. Every team when they played Barcelona knew that it was ‘Stop Messi and you stop Barcelona’ but it was easier said than done. It was no different when teams fared against India either: Stop Virat and Rohit and you stop India. Whilst that happened only once or twice in eight matches, when it did happen, though, the team crumbled and the outcome was inevitable: a loss. It might now be a thing of the past. Six years on, India, in Rahul, finally have a third cog in the wheel, and his emergence might just have put an end to the comparisons with Messi and Barcelona.
And Rahul is not just the third wheel in the cog, but, as of this moment, the best of the lot. All through the home season, we knew it, but we just didn’t want to believe it. His 61 in Hyderabad was overshadowed by Kohli’s 94; His 91 in Mumbai was sandwiched in-between rampant blitzs of Rohit and Kohli and well, I suppose his runs against Sri Lanka don’t count for much anyway. All these knocks made us believe that he, much like several of his predecessors, was a batsman who merely leeched off the excellence of Rohit and Kohli. We felt that he would be gobbled up alive should he be sent for hunting all by himself, but today in Auckland, Rahul proved that it was Rohit and Kohli and not him, who were leeching of his eminence.
Much in contrast to his other ‘great’ knocks, there was nothing fancy about what Rahul did today. There were no flicks to mid-wicket nor were any square cuts to deep backward point. It was 50 balls of sustained T20 batting excellence that first healed India’s wounds after which it carved the Kiwi skins open, allowing the rest of the batsmen - or just Shreyas Iyer, should I say - to ravage it. Having lost both Kohli and Rohit, New Zealand had their tails up, hoping to prey on an Indian team who they thought had their wheels ripped off, but little did they know that there was another car, a hundred times faster and more lethal, waiting to ram into them. Eventually, it did, in the form of Rahul, and crushed them to the point of no return.
Perhaps we can derive a lot from Rahul’s own words post the match: “I knew what I had to do, I couldn't play the same way. I had a different responsibility. We lost Rohit and Kohli early, so I had to stay in there.” At 39/2, there was nothing that stopped Rahul from being reckless or irresponsible. For starters, he was in the midst of an outrageous run of form and was due for failure. And on top of it, the designated captains had failed to steer the ship to the shore, so had he done something stupid, no fingers would have been pointed at him. But he felt the need to do it and he did it. Perhaps, this was Rahul’s “Bran” moment, where he felt that he was ready to become the Three-Eyed Raven.
As silly as it sounds, especially for a batsman who has five years of international cricket, 1350 runs, two centuries and 35 innings under his belt, January 26 might just be the day when KL Rahul came off age. For India, this was anything but déjà vu. As a matter of fact, at least in T20 cricket, never have they had a batsman voluntarily put his hands up, carry the team on his back and shoulder responsibility, let alone outshine both Virat and Rohit. For Rahul, Auckland was a knock that proved that he’s not a cog but the whole damn wheel but more importantly, for India, it might just spell the dawn of a new era.
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