Team India has finally got its first win on the United Kingdom (UK) tour. After being defeated by Ireland and England in the T20 series, the Indian team broke the streak of consecutive defeats by winning the first match of the ODI series against the British. In this match played at the Edgebest Stadium in Birmingham on Tuesday (July 14), Shubman Gill Brigade won the toss and came to bat first, reducing the English team to 107 runs by 6 wickets. Joe Root (76 not out) and Liam Dawson (68) played half-centuries to take England to a respectable score.
In response to this, the Indian team also did not have a good start and lost the wickets of Rohit Sharma (11) and Virat Kohli (5) within 50 runs. Captain Shubman Gill rescued the team from the initial setbacks by playing aggressive innings from one end. It seemed that Shubman would return only after winning but he had to leave the field due to muscle strain at the total score of 149. As soon as he returned, head coach Gautam Gambhir’s experiment started and the team came into trouble from the winning situation.
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Gambhir’s ‘Sundar’ experiment continues
Shubman retired hurt after scoring 80 runs in 75 balls. Shreyas Iyer was standing at the other end. India was completely in control. After this, KL Rahul was to come to bat but Gambhir sent Washington Sundar. Sundar came at number-5 and played an unbeaten half-century but due to losing his batting position, Rahul failed for the second consecutive match. Earlier, he was pushed to number six in the Lucknow ODI against Afghanistan, where he was out for a golden duck.
In Edgbaston, Rahul could score only 1 run after playing 3 balls. Shreyas had just been run out. In such a situation, as soon as Rahul’s wicket fell, Team India’s score became 160/4. 99 runs were still needed to win. For a moment it seemed that the difficulties may increase but Akshar Patel played an excellent innings and gave an easy victory to Team India. However, the question still remains that why tamper with Rahul’s position?
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Rahul has established himself at number 5
Rahul has confirmed his place at number 5 in the ODI team. He has scored 1517 runs in 35 innings at this batting position at an unmatched average of 63.20 and an excellent strike rate of 100.59. During this period, he has scored 3 centuries with his bat. Rahul has batted from number 1 to 7 in ODI cricket but his best comes only at number five. Still, it remains unclear what is being tried to be achieved by pushing him down the batting order. We have already seen in T20 the consequences of tampering with the batting order.
If you don’t want to bat then why Shivam Dubey?
The next ODI World Cup is to be held in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, where apart from Hardik Pandya, another seam all-rounder will be needed. Nitish Kumar Reddy and Harshit Rana are being prepared to support Hardik. However, in the current series against England, all these three players are out due to injury. In such a situation, Shivam Dubey has got a chance.
Shivam Dubey bowled 6 overs in the first ODI against England and took the wicket of Will Jacques for 27 runs. His turn to bat did not come in the run chase. The team management had slotted him at number-8. Considering the batting ability that Shivam Dubey has, keeping him so low raises questions on the management’s decision. If he has to be made to bat in this position, then why not give a better chance to Kuldeep Yadav?
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