KL Rahul’s IPL 2018 performances for Kings XI Punjab prove that it’s time he gets his due in the Indian ODI team

On 4 January, when the 2018 Indian Premier League retention list was announced, cricket aficionados across the country were perplexed. Royal Challengers Bangalore had retained Virat Kohli (for Rs 17 crore) and AB de Villiers (Rs 11 crore) obviously. But their third pick was 20-year-old batsman Sarfaraz Khan.

While he is considered a good young talent, Khan has played only a handful games in his IPL career and was even dropped in 2017 owing to fitness issues. In 2018, he has played three matches thus far, scoring 11 runs. Even at Rs 1.75 crore (with only Rs 3 crore deducted from RCB’s purse), this move didn’t make sense. The franchise had decided not to retain Chris Gayle, KL Rahul or even Yuzvendra Chahal.

Sure, RCB paid a premium for Kohli and de Villiers. Not retaining Gayle was an obvious move. But to neglect another top-rated Indian talent in either Rahul or Chahal was criminal. Word is that they had wanted to retain Rahul, but could have only paid him Rs 7 crore as per IPL rules and perhaps opted to use the Right-To-Match (RTM) card during the auction at a higher price. How much higher, though, was the question?

As it panned out, Mumbai Indians, Rajasthan Royals, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kings XI Punjab got into a bidding price and drove the price to Rs 11 crore, with Punjab making Rahul one of the highest-paid cricketers in the league. RCB opted not to use their RTM card. It was staggering to watch, and nonsensical in every way.

“It is just how the IPL goes. Each team has different plans and I had not played a lot of cricket in the four-five months leading up to the auction. I would have loved to play for RCB because of the opportunities they have given me and helped me become who I am today. But this is how the game goes and you get different challenges. You have to be able to adapt,” Rahul had told this writer in a freewheeling conversation before the Sunday game against Rajasthan Royals.

Players do get a say in their IPL retainer, and there is a feeling that the batsman in question knew that he could command a higher draw in the auction. And for good reason, as capped Indian players — whether batsmen, bowlers, all-rounders or wicketkeepers — have always commanded a premium price. Remember, Ravindra Jadeja was once sold for $2 million, and the likes of Yuvraj Singh and Dinesh Karthik have regularly broken the bank.

You just have to look at the dynamics of that auction day and wonder if RCB missed a trick in not paying that extra money for Rahul, particularly since they got Chahal for only Rs 6 crore using RTM. Manish Pandey went for Rs 11 crore; Robin Uthappa, Sanju Samson and Karun Nair commanded Rs 6.5, Rs 8 and Rs 5.6 crore respectively. Even bowlers, Umesh Yadav (Rs 4.2 crore) and Karn Sharma (Rs 5 crore) went for good sums. When it comes to Indian players, franchises have to shell out not only for their current form but also their development cycle. There is no telling when any of these high-profile, top-rated Indian talents can take the IPL by storm.

Like Rahul has done, with 376 runs in nine matches thus far at a strike-rate of 162.77 (higher than Gayle), inclusive of three half-centuries. One of those fifties came off only 14 balls as he set the IPL alight in his first outing for Punjab against Delhi Daredevils, even before Gayle had played a game. On Sunday though, he took another additional 30 deliveries, getting to his match-winning effort off 44 balls against Rajasthan Royals.

The differentiation in these two knocks showcases Rahul’s range as a batsman. With or without Gayle, he has revelled in the opener’s role at Punjab, something he didn’t get to do much at RCB. In almost every game, Punjab have benefitted from a quick start, albeit they didn’t get it against Rajasthan yesterday. Even as they slipped to 29/2 in a 153-chase, it became amply clear that Rahul was going to play a crucial role in the game’s outcome.

And it transpired so, as Rahul came out with a clutch-controlled innings. He picked the bad deliveries early in the innings and then settled down to tie up one end even as Punjab lost wickets at the other. Then, just when the match seemed to go down to the wire, he took both Jofra Archer and Jaydev Unadkat for runs. Rajasthan’s pacers had looked on the ascendency earlier in the innings. With 31 runs from these two overs, Rahul completely destroyed them.

This was a batsman in full control of the match situation, and more importantly, in complete awareness of his abilities. If you turn back the pages and track his career graph since the nervous Test debut in Melbourne (2014), Rahul has been on a path of continuous evolution, rising to the height of India’s first-choice opener across all formats in March 2017 before a shoulder injury brought him back to square one.

He missed the last IPL, and coming back from injury has been tough, for he has had to wait for chances across all three formats. So much so, that he had to be accommodated at number three or four in the ODIs (against Sri Lanka in August 2017), before being dropped as the experiment failed to take off, and then relegated to third-choice opener in South Africa. On the back of his imperious form, it is now time to re-open that debate.

Rahul is currently only fourth in the most runs category this season, but he is well on his path to improving on his best showing — 397 runs in 14 matches in 2016. On the back of that performance, he had charted his way into the Indian ODI/T20 teams, with the selectors — and everyone else watching — acknowledging that he was ‘not only a Test batsman’. By his own admission to this writer, Rahul says that as a batsman, he has already bypassed the 2016 version.

Maybe then, it is time to give Rahul his due, and captain Kohli can figure out how to do to it in the context of India’s ODI plans. For RCB though, it is already too late.