Rahul - the perennial giver primed to be the guiding light of India’s GenNext

It was at the hallowed Melbourne Cricket Ground that, exactly 10 years back, K.L. Rahul took his first steps in international cricket. Tentative, stuttering steps, admittedly, but crucial, formative ones that would lead to better things.

Rahul made his Test debut as a fresh-faced 22-year-old, full of ability and promise, in what turned out to be Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s last outing in the five-day game. He lasted just 13 deliveries across two innings, caught behind square top-edging a Nathan Lyon sweep in the first and top-edging an attempted pull off Mitchell Johnson that lobbed up for first slip to jog back and pouch it in the second. His scores – 3 and 1. His batting positions — No. 6 and No. 3 respectively. We should have seen it coming, shouldn’t we? After all, he was Rahul from Bengaluru.

Commonplace

Like his great predecessor and illustrious namesake, batting out of position became commonplace for Rahul. Rahul Dravid started his Test career at No. 7, rapidly moved up to No. 3 and while that’s where he made the bulk of his 13,288 Test runs, he was pushed up the order to open the batting — something he was not a great fan of — when the situation demanded. As late as in 2007-08, nearly 12 years after his excellent debut at Lord’s in 1996, Dravid was still asked to open the Test batting. When India needed him to keep wickets for team balance in One-Day Internationals, he did so, with aplomb, including at the 2003 World Cup. Wait, doesn’t that sound familiar? Ah yes, the new Rahul, didn’t he do the same thing at the home World Cup 20 years later?

Staying with the new Rahul. If he does reflect on how the last decade has gone by, and you suspect he won’t right now because he has more pressing issues to consider, he will admit to himself that it hasn’t been a career entirely fulfilled, or fulfilling.

After 58 Tests, he averages only 34.58, at least 10 runs less than what he should be. He has played himself out of the T20 setup, one suspects permanently. The 50-over format, where he keeps wickets and generally bats at No. 5, is where he has truly excelled, marrying an average of 49.15 with a strike-rate of 87.56. But that alone is not how Rahul will want to be remembered because for all his tattoos, he belongs to the old school of batsmanship that still regards Test cricket as the most primary of all formats.

As we said, No. 6 and No. 3 in his first Test, No. 2 in his second, at the SCG when Virat Kohli took over as the skipper in his own right. It’s as an opener Rahul had cut his teeth in schools’ cricket, and for Karnataka in the Ranji Trophy. That’s where he announced himself on the world stage. The brain-fades at the MCG were an aberration, this was the real Rahul that we had all come to know and admire – that’s what those who had seen him light up grounds lush and dusty in Bengaluru felt. A flowing, six-hour 110, beautiful to watch, poetry in motion. It was Rahul at his subliminal best. It is what he is capable of, on a regular basis. He should watch that innings on loop. Maybe he does, actually.

It took the soft-spoken lad another year and a half to break into the limited-overs formats, on the tour of Zimbabwe in June 2016. He celebrated his ODI call-up with a hundred in his first appearance and brought up his first T20I century two months later in Lauderhill against West Indies, in his fourth game in that format. Within 20 innings, he had an international century in each of the three versions, the quickest by a distance. The sky appeared the limit for the sinewy right-hander.

Untimely injuries

But Rahul hasn’t quite managed to relive those dizzy heights. He has been struck down by untimely injuries, of course, but he has also been his worst enemy, seemingly often retreating into a mental shell that reflected in his batting. When he bats with freedom, he looks a million dollars; a couple of days later, as if seized by the world’s most vexing problems, he potters around, almost out of place on a cricket field. When he embraces the former garb, he enthrals and enchants; conversely, he can also frustrate and exasperate.

Having captained the country in all three formats and now into his 11th year as an international cricketer, Rahul is as much of a leader as those above and around him in the seniority stakes — Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, of course, but also Ravindra Jadeja, Jasprit Bumrah and Rishabh Pant. Despite a decade of international cricket, he is only 32, and a fit-looking one at that, though even he has shown that there is a vast difference between looking fit and being fit. He is perhaps hitting his peak as a batter and there is at least a good half-dozen years ahead of him if he can keep the fire burning, the motivation going. Steeped in strong basics and not a 100% hand-eye player who can quickly go downhill when time catches up with them, Rahul is entering a new, exciting phase of his career.

Senior

At some stage in 2025, he will perhaps become the senior-most batter in the Test team, when he will have to look after not just himself but a youngish core unit of Pant, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, and potentially Sarfaraz Khan, his Karnataka mate Devdutt Padikkal and Dhruv Jurel, among others. Rahul has shown himself to be a capable leader and this is a role that will excite and challenge him, which is exactly what he needs if he is to rid his mind of any residual gremlins that might be still populating it.

It’s been a topsy-turvy last 12 months for Rahul, who went to South Africa last December for a two-Test series as a wicketkeeper/middle-order batter. A wonderful century from No. 6 (the first time he was batting at that position after Melbourne 2014) in Centurion reiterated his class and earned him a move up to No. 4 in the first of five home Tests against England in Hyderabad, with Kohli absent on paternity leave. He made his maiden outing at two-drop count with 86 and 22 before a hamstring injury cut short his series, and when he came back against Bangladesh in Chennai in September, he was sent scurrying down to No. 6

Scores of 16, 22 not out, 68, 0 and 12, coupled with Sarfaraz’s 150 in the second innings of the Bengaluru loss to New Zealand, kept Rahul on the bench for the last two Tests against the Kiwis, though it was always on the cards that for the Australia Tests, he would return to No. 6. Again, where have we heard that before – a Rahul for a crisis? When Rohit withdrew from the first Test, Rahul – who else? – was asked to open even though Abhimanyu Easwaran was in the squad as the reserve opener. He made the most of what must certainly be his preferred position – at press conferences, he is officially correct, ‘Happy to bat at any number, so long as I am in the XI’ – with a solid 26 in the first dig and a patient 77 in the second, when he helped Jaiswal add 201 for the first wicket.

Big call

India, and Rohit, needed to make a big call when the skipper returned for the second game in Adelaide. Sticking with Rahul as opener meant the captain would bat at No. 6 for the first time in six years. Hardly ideal, given that his muscle memory had been totally overhauled, but Rohit put team ahead of self and desisted from splitting the Jaiswal-Rahul combine even though he and Jaiswal had had a great run in 14 consecutive outings as opening partners. Rahul hasn’t let his captain down, backing up 37 in the first innings of the pink-ball Test with 84 at a stop-start Gabba, a knock that was only ended by a spectacular Steve Smith catch at slip.

It’s safe to presume that if not for the rest of the series, Rahul will open in the longer term. India have five Tests in England next summer and that’s where his famous ‘leaving’ skills will be tested all over again. Rahul and Rohit were primarily responsible for India’s excellent displays in England in 2021 when they delivered one terrific opening salvo after another to blunt James Anderson and Stuart Broad and opened the door for the middle order to cash in. It was in that series that Rahul scored a hundred at Lord’s, Rohit brought up his first overseas century at The Oval.

Huge role

Four years on and with potentially a new opening partner, Rahul will have a huge role to play in taking Jaiswal along with him. In his brief career so far, Jaiswal hasn’t filled his boots overseas, except in his debut series in the West Indies last year. He is still young and will occasionally allow the impetuosity of youth to get the better of him. Rahul was young once – cricket-young, that is, before one takes offence – and is therefore well positioned to guide the relative newcomer through choppy waters. He did that in the Perth second innings, transferring the lessons passed on to him by M. Vijay on the tour of 2014-15. There is no reason why he can’t again. After all, he has proved himself already to be the perennial giver, hasn’t he?

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