Cricket fans disagree on Ajinkya Rahane’s selection for India’s World Test Championship (WTC) final lineup. The return of Rahane is not solely due to his IPL performance, according to some fans and analysts, and his experience will be helpful in English conditions against a team like Australia.
However, others contend that Rahane’s return is not solely due to his IPL performance. Rahane’s 15-month absence from the Test team will remain a mystery since the selection committee withheld information.
Cricketing logic supports the widespread perception that the selection committee, which is currently operating without a full-time chairman following Chetan Sharma’s retirement earlier this year, was left with few options when Shreyas Iyer was unable to compete in the WTC final due to a back injury. Irfan Pathan, a former all-rounder for India, shares that opinion.
Irfan claimed that if Iyer had been fit, Rahane would not have been chosen.
Irfan talks about Rahane’s exclusion
“Had Shreyas Iyer been fit then Rahane would not have got the place in the WTC Final side,” Irfan said on Star Sports’ show Cricket Live.
Iyer recently had back surgery, so it will be some time before he can resume his duties. Irfan was quick to counter that Rahane’s performance for Chennai Super Kings in the IPL 2023 will boost his confidence when he walks the pitch at The Oval on June 7.
“As far as the current form is concerned, he is looking in great touch. The format in which he is playing now is completely different but Rahane’s performance on foreign pitches has always been good and this has gone in his favor,” Irfan added.
Rahane’s aggressive batting approach in the 2018 IPL has astounded everyone. In only five games, he has scored at an incredible rate of 199 and smashed as many as 11 sixes. Rahane’s best-ever strike rate in a season was 137 in 2019, when he played for the Rajasthan Royals, to put things in perspective.
In terms of his red-ball performance, the 82-test veteran has scored 634 runs at an average of 57 in 7 matches during the most recent Ranji Trophy. The average may be a little misleading because his two towering scores of 191 and 204, which set his season apart from just one half-century, were what really carried it.
Stay updated with all the cricketing action, follow Cricketmatchpredictions Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
