KL Rahul bagged his first Test win and the first series win as an Indian team captain when India whitewashed Bangladesh in the recently concluded Test series.
The men in blue side won the two-match red ball series by a margin of 2-0 and they have bettered their chances of reaching the WTC Final in 2023.
But the form of Kannur Lokesh Rahul (KL Rahul) isn't that great. He has been in poor form throughout the year 2022 and hasn't performed in the main events like the Asia Cup 2022 and T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia. After coming back from injury, KL hasn’t had a great run across the formats.
Rahul has been in the firing lines and he has faced a lot of criticism because of his strings of low scorers.
Many experts believe that the BCCI and management should drop KL Rahul from the team and that too from all three formats.
On the tour of Bangladesh in 2022, KL Rahul played well in the first one-day international match. But in that game, KL Rahul played as the middle-order batter and not as the opener.
India didn't have a good game with the bat and the Bangladeshi bowlers bundled the batting powerhouse of India to their second-lowest score.
The men in blue batters lasted for just 41.2 overs and scored just 186 runs. KL Rahul was the top scorer in that match with 73 runs.
However, after that, his performance went down as he scored just 14 runs in the second ODI and just eight runs in the third and final match of this fifty-overs series.
In the two matches of the red ball series, KL Rahul had got starts in both the Test matches. But he didn’t convert them into big centuries.
In the first innings of the opening match, Rahul scored 22 runs and in the second innings, he managed 23 runs. He continued his poor form in the second and the last Test match as well.
KL Rahul didn’t perform as a leader of this Indian Team. He made very good bowling changes as a skipper. But as a batter, he never stepped up.
In the first innings of the last Test match, KL Rahul scored just ten runs and seven runs in the 2nd innings when India was chasing a score of 145 runs.
Dinesh Karthik, who played in the T20 World Cup 2022 in Australia said that he would give couple more chances to KL Rahul.
But he needs to work on his average. As an opener, the average needs to be higher. Rahul's average is in the mid-30s and that is not at all acceptable.
The Indian fans too didn't show any support for KL Rahul because of his poor form in recent matches. Many of them want KL Rahul should be thrown out of the team in all three formats.
One fan wrote that it is hard to watch the game when KL Rahul is in the playing eleven and it is irritating to watch him play even after so many low scorers.
In four test matches and eight innings, KL Rahul has scored just 137 with an average of 17.12 and he has scored just one half-century this year. But he had a decent 2021.
He smashed tons in Lord’s and Centurion. India won those away Test matches. KL had scored 461 runs in five games and ten innings last year.
Now in the upcoming series against Australia, KL Rahul's place in the team looks lost because Rohit Sharma will make a comeback after he missed the recently concluded series of the red ball format against Bangladesh.
The wonder boy of Indian cricket Shubman Gill can be an excellent replacement for Rahul in red ball format.
India will start their 2023 season with the limited overs series against Sri Lanka and New Zealand. These two countries will tour India for three matches each in the one-day international format and T20 International format.
First India will play against Sri Lanka on 3rd January 2023 and later against The Kiwis.
According to the news and reports, the selection panel led by Chetan Sharma has dropped KL Rahul from the T20Is against SL.
Ishan Kishan would be an ideal replacement for the men in blue side in the limited-overs format.
Ishan Kishan can play as an opener in the shortest format and ODI games. If India is looking for a middle-order batter then the team management has many options like Sanju Samson, Deepak Hooda, Rajat Patidar and Washington Sundar.
We might see these young batters in the upcoming home series of the limited overs format.
