India’s vice-captain in Test cricket, Ajinkya Rahane may not be the batsman he used to be during his first couple of years in Test cricket but is still good enough to be India’s number five in the longest format of the game, feels Sanjay Manjrekar. The former Test batsman believes that even though KL Rahul has done well in limited-overs cricket, that can’t be a parameter for replacing Rahane in a five-day format as the stylish Karnataka batsman needs to score heavily in domestic first-class games.
During answering some questions by his Twitter followers on his Youtube channel, Manjrekar said, “KL Rahul has been brilliant at number five. Yes granted, Rahane doesn’t look the same player he was in the first two years of his Test career and I would like to see that kind of form coming back.”
Manjrekar said although Rahane has been getting some Test runs of late but the player himself would ideally like to be more consistent.
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Sanjar further explained, “It comes in little sparse, sometimes, but not as consistently as he would like. But based on his runs that he has got, I don’t think it is right to think of Rahul at number five in Test matches.”
As far as Rahul was concerned, Manjrekar reminded his fans that the batsman wasn’t exactly successful when he last played Test matches in the West Indies.
Former Indian cricketer, elaborated, “The last time he (Rahul) played Test cricket, he wasn’t that impressive and let’s not get too carried away with a batsman getting runs in T20 and 50 overs cricket and push into Test match cricket. So, (for) KL Rahul to nudge the Indian batsman at the test level in the middle-order, he will have to get a truckload of runs at the domestic level, just like (Mayank) Agarwal did to get in the Indian team.”
As far as the year-end Australia tour is concerned, Manjrekar reckons that Rohit Sharma should open the innings with Mayank Agarwal while Prithvi Saw according to him can be the reserve option.
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While there has been some discussions on whether India should have split captaincy, Manjrekar opined that currently, that’s not the need considering the fact that the Indian skipper, Virat Kohli is an automatic choice as he plays all the three formats. Asked whether split captaincy is something that India needs, Manjrekar said, “Now, my theory of split captaincy is that you don’t go looking to have split captaincy.
Explaining it further, Sanjay Manjrekar said that India was blessed to have captains like MS Dhoni and Kohli, and hence there is no need to have split captaincy.
