KL Rahul hinted on Friday that India are likely to play five bowlers in the Boxing Day Test in Centurion.
At a media conference on Friday, the stand-in Test vice-captain also said that the team was facing a “very, very difficult decision” as to who would play at No. 5.
“I think more teams have started playing (five bowlers), because, you know, every team wants to pick up 20 wickets, and that’s the only way you can win a Test match,” Rahul said. “We’ve definitely used that tactic, and it has helped us in every Test match that we’ve played away from India. I think the workload also becomes slightly easier to manage with five bowlers, and when you have that kind of quality, you might as well use it.”
A five-bowler combination leaves room only for five batters. Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli select themselves. That leaves space for one, for which there are three contenders — Ajinkya Rahane, Shreyas Iyer and Hanuma Vihari. Rahul admitted it was a tough call.
“Look, it is a very, very difficult decision to make, obviously,” he said. “Ajinkya has been a very important part of our Test team and has played very, very crucial knocks in his career. The last 15-18 months, if I can think back, his knock in Melbourne was really, really crucial; it helped us win a Test match. That partnership with Pujara at Lord’s in the second innings where he got a 50 was really important, and that ended up in us winning the Test match. So he’s been a key player for us in the middle order, and he’s a very, very strong player.
“Shreyas obviously has taken his chances. He played a brilliant knock in Kanpur, got a hundred; so he’s very exciting. And Hanuma has done the same for us… So yeah, it’s a tough decision… you’ll get to know in a couple of days’ time.”
Rahul said getting used to the bounce of the pitches was a challenge.
“I haven’t played a lot of games here in South Africa, but from my experience, I think sometimes the pitches can be a little bit challenging because of the tennis-ball bounce,” he said. “We’ve played in Australia where the pitches are fast and bouncy, but here it can be a bit spongy in the first couple of days, and then it starts to quicken up. So when I played here last time, each time the wicket was a bit difficult, and you had to understand and adjust according to that.”
Rahul said the focus so far has been only on the opening Test. “It’s a huge series,” said Rahul. “As a team, we’ve always taken overseas series as a challenge. We’ve won series in England and Australia, which gives us a lot of confidence. We haven’t won a series in South Africa, so that gives us the extra motivation.
“The discussion so far has only been about the first Test. We are not thinking too far ahead.”
Dravid to address
In a departure from tradition, head coach Rahul Dravid will address the media on Saturday, the eve of the Test. That Virat Kohli will not be part of the interaction was enough to activate the rumour mills.
The captain had contradicted Sourav Ganguly and alleged that the Board president hadn’t requested him to reconsider his decision to step down from the T20I captaincy in September.
Team India surely don’t want to give controversy a chance ahead of the Test.