Former Indian selector Devang Gandhi has made some strong and bold suggestions to the Indian cricket team regarding their batting order for the 2nd Test at Adelaide Oval, which is slated to begin from 6th December 2024 at Adelaide.
India have made a strong start to the 5-match Test series and defeated Australia by a humongous margin of 295 runs. With the backs against the walls, the Indian cricket team, led by stand-in-skipper, Jasprit Bumrah, oozed resilience and won the 1st Test.
Rohit Sharma was out on parental leave and hence couldn’t participate in the 1st Test. Now with him and Shubman Gill back, the Indian think-tank will have some long selection headaches.
With several permutation and combinations available, Devang Gandhi feels that Rohit Sharma should be slotted in at 6 and KL Rahul should open the innings.
“In fact, I feel Rohit should come in at No. 6, because Rishabh Pant, too, has shaped up very well at 5…The left-right combo, too, can be maintained that way,” Gandhi said to Times of India.
“It becomes difficult if a middle-order batter tries to become an opener in the latter stages of his career. But it will not be difficult for an opener to go in the middle order, especially for Rohit, who started as a No. 6 batter for India,” he added.
KL Rahul had a terrific 1st Test at Perth
With several question marks over his place in the Test side, KL Rahul put a lid on the mouth of all his naysayers. KL Rahul scored 26 and 77 runs in the 2 innings of the 1st Test and former a rock-solid opening partnership with the southpaw, Yashasvi Jaiswal.
He also scored 27 runs in the practice game of India against the PM XI of Australia at Canberra. He will be quite confident if he opens the innings and could carry forward the momentum into the remainder of the series.
Rohit Sharma has previously played in the middle-order and had started his career as a middle-order batter. He had played in the middle-order when India registered their first-ever Test series victory on Australian soil in 2018-19.
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