Rahul's exclusion quite baffling

 Long before he became a selector himself, Mohinder Amarnath, sometime in 1988, called the then national selectors a “bunch of jokers” for the apparent raw deal meted out to him.

KL Rahul is too sophisticated to say anything that nasty but he would be hurting no less after the right-hander was cruelly axed for the three-match ODI series against New Zealand starting October 22. It wasn’t too long ago that the senior national selection committee chairman MSK Prasad, whose panel seems to have perfected the art of bizarre selections, had termed Rahul as “too good a player to sit out (of the playing 11)”.

Just a couple of days ago, the three-member panel was left embarrassed when Ashish Nehra, who was included for the T20Is against Australia because of the value he adds to the side in terms of skills and mentoring, announced his retirement from the game. One of the reasons Nehra, 38, gave for quitting the game was that there was no big event in the next eight months or so. As if the selectors weren’t aware of India’s schedule.  

The selectors have put themselves in a spot again by trading Rahul for Dinesh Karthik. It was during the course of the third Test against Sri Lanka in Pallekele where the team for the limited-overs series (five ODIs and one T20I) was picked and Prasad proclaimed then that Rahul was the chosen one to bat at No 4 since Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma were inseparable at the top of the order. Mind you, Rahul, the youngest to score centuries in all the three formats, had established himself as the first-choice opener in all the three formats before a left-shoulder injury, which needed a surgery to be set right, laid him low.

While he rightfully got back his opening slot in Tests, he was elbowed out when it came to limited-overs cricket. Having forced him to bat down the order, the least the team management could have done was to give the batsman an extended run at the promised position, which was No 4. Instead, in the name of experimentation for the World Cup, the captain-coach duo of Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri made him bat at No 5, 3 and 4 in the first three ODIs against Lanka. After failures in those three innings, foxed as he was by the mystery of Akila Dananjaya, Rahul never got a chance in the next seven ODIs (two against Lanka and five against Australia) that India played. Not even after they won the series against Australia 3-0 at home and in the subsequent two T20Is.

If those three failures against Lanka were the yardstick to axe him now then why was he included in the squad against Australia in the first place? And if he was good enough to be in the squad against Australia, how can he be dropped now without even playing one match? True, Rahul’s inclusion in the playing XI has become increasingly tough with Manish Pandey and Kedar Jadhav giving a good account of themselves on consistent basis but to say that he didn’t deserve to be in the 15-member squad is to defy cricketing logic. 

There is much to marvel about this current Indian team. They are No 1 in two formats (Tests, ODIs) and appear destined for greater things but they can’t be accused of being transparent in their selection policy. In the process, more than one player has been left with his confidence shattered.