KL Rahul vs Sarfaraz Khan: Aakash Chopra names his pick for the second Test against New Zealand in Pune
Aakash Chopra said that Team India has a big question to answer regarding KL Rahul and Sarfaraz Khan for the second Test against New Zealand in Pune. He pointed out that Rahul doesn’t have an excellent Test record despite playing more than 50 red-ball games for the country.
The Pune Test will start on October 24. With Shubman Gill’s return confirmed, either KL Rahul or Sarfaraz Khan will have to sit out of the Playing XI.
“The Indian cricket has a philosophy that if the original choice player gets fit and is available for the selection, he will replace the player who played in his place. The team management had a question regarding the number three slot in the first Test and they decided to sent Virat Kohli instead of checking KL Rahul. The captain and coach were comfortable and decided to keep Rahul at No.6 instead of moving him up in the batting order,” Aakash Chopra said.
“They took it as a makeshift move. However, with Sarfaraz Khan scoring 150 and KL Rahul failing in both innings, they have a big question to solve. I was looking at KL Rahul’s numbers in Test cricket. He has an average of 33, which is not great,” he added.
Chopra mentioned that KL Rahul has scored just one hundred in India, and his numbers are good only in overseas countries.
Chopra also highlighted Rahul’s numbers in the last 10 Tests.
“In the previous 10 Tests, he has scored 434 runs, including one hundred. He averages 27 in 17 innings,” he observed.
“It was easy to drop Karun Nair because there was a gap in two series in between. Sarfaraz Khan and Dhruv Jurel were benched because of a lot of time in between. When someone has done well in the previous game and your team has lost, and although KL Rahul deserves another game, an average of 27 in the last 10 Tests, you may say that you are running out of patience,” he concluded.
Chopra said that he would play Sarfaraz Khan while acknowledging that he is not aware of what Rohit Sharma and Gautam Gambhir would do.
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