Team India had won the first two Tests in Nagpur and Indore, however, the form of opening batter KL Rahul forced the management and the selectors to take a tough call of first removing him as the vice-captain and then drop him altogether from the line-up. Rahul had scored just 38 runs in three innings of the first two Test matches and Shubman Gill replaced him in the side. However, a former India opener suggested that it was good for Rahul that he missed the Test given how badly the other batters in the side performed.
1983 World Cup winner Kris Srikkanth was thankful that Rahul didn’t play the third Test in Indore against Australia saying that had he played a couple of more games and failed, his career would have ended.
“First and foremost, I am happy for KL Rahul. Thankfully, good that he did not play. If he had played on these wickets and failed to get going in the next two Tests, and his career could have ended… thank god, he didn’t play. Frankly speaking,” he said, speaking on his YouTube channel Cheeky Cheeka.
While taking an aim on the pitch, Srikkanth said that it wasn’t a good advertisement of Test cricket and no batter could have scored runs as the bowlers were turning it square from the first ball itself, on Day 1. Srikkanth said that bowling wasn’t tough on that surface as even he would have pikced wickets as it was a graveyard for the batters.
“On these pitches, batting is very difficult. Whoever it is, batting is difficult. Let it be anybody, be it Virat Kohli, no one can score runs on these pitches. If you looked at it, Kuhnemann, bowling in the first innings, got the ball to rip through and turn square.
“On these wickets, taking wickets is not a big thing. Even if I had bowled, I would have picked up wickets. These are all hard talks, we have to accept them,” he added.
India folded for 109 and 163 in the two innings as apart from Cheteshwar Pujara (59) in the second innings, not a single Indian batter played well and Australia stormed to a victory with 9 wickets in hand.
