New Delhi, Jan 13 (PTI) A few days back, veteran Indian batsmen Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane were trending on social media with the hashtag ‘old (made up of Pujara and Rahane’) after a string of failures in international cricket. .
After failing five times in six innings on the tour of South Africa, social media is once again being heavily written against the duo. The team management has been ignoring these things for a long time but after this tour it will be difficult for them to defend both of them.
Keeping Hanuma Vihari, Shreyas Iyer and Shubman Gill (recovering from a calf injury) out of the playing XI in the two-Test series against Sri Lanka in February-March too, it would be a ridicule if these two experienced players get a place. Will happen.
In the second innings of the third Test being played in Cape Town, when the team needed the most help from these two batsmen, they failed once again. Pujara (nine runs) tried to play the rising ball of Marco Jensen into the leg side but Keegan Pietersen caught it beautifully at leg slip. After this, Rabada’s rising ball kissed Rahane’s glove and hit wicketkeeper Kyle Wren’s glove in the air and Dean Elgar completed the rest of the work. Rahane could only open his account in this innings.
He scored just 136 runs on the tour of South Africa at an average of 22.66 while Pujara’s figures were even worse. He scored 124 runs at an average of 20.66 during this period.
When Chetan Sharma and other selectors will pick the squad for the next Test series in India, there is every possibility that these figures will be enough to show these players the way out of the team.
More than anyone else, these two players will also know that time is up for them. No player in Indian cricket has been given as many chances after successive failures as Rahane and Pujara have got.
Rahane and Pujara have been failing continuously for the last two years and have found success only occasionally. Whereas the opposite should have happened.
It seemed that the team management as well as the selectors were bent upon giving him ample opportunity to succeed. And both of them are proving them wrong time and again.
Perhaps it is appropriate to give him a break and look at other options that will benefit Indian cricket.
Both these match after match are getting out in the same way. At times it seems that they have no clarity about whether they want to play fearlessly aggressively or defensively.
In Pujara’s case, his slow pace of scoring runs puts pressure on the other batsmen.
Rahane has a flaw in his footwork on which he has failed to improve for a long time. Against the fast bowlers, he is getting out in the same manner on the balls outside the off-stump.
Even after this, if his place in the team remains intact, then it will be unfair to players like Iyer and Vihari.
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