At 28 years of age, and after 87 games, Nitish Rana cannot be blamed if he considers himself as an IPL veteran. The left-handed batsman from Delhi believes he has earned enough expertise to play the anchor’s role for his franchise, the Kolkata Knight Riders.

Rana did drop the anchor in the Knights’ successful chase of a 153-run target against Rajasthan Royals on Monday. While doing so, he, however, did not neglect his scoring rate, as his unbeaten innings of 48 came off 37 balls and had three fours and two sixes in it.

“A lot of things depend on factors like who the opponent team is and what total we are chasing and what number I am batting. I have been playing IPL for seven-eight years now and trying to perform the anchor or main player.

“I have been successful till date and hope that in the coming matches, I play such innings for the team,” Rana said at the post-match media conference.

Rana, however, has not got a fixed batting position in the Knights’ current set-up and, in his own words, is being used “according to match situation”.

Generally, for a batsman to play the anchor’s role, even in the fluid T20 format, it is important that there is a fixed position for him to bat. So one wonders if Rana, a fine batsman, is being used best by the Brendon McCullum-coached Knights.

If one maps Rana’s IPL journey since he first came to prominence while playing for Mumbai Indians in 2017, it will be evident that he never had consistency in what his team demanded from him. From numbers 1 to 6, Rana has batted in every position in the last eight years.

While he batted at the No.4 position the maximum number of times (37 innings), numbers say that he has been most successful as an opener (12 innings). Rana averages 27 while batting at No.4, but as an opener in the IPL, he flaunts an average of 36.42. He also has five fifties as an opener as compared to only two while being the No.4 batter.

On Monday, he did bat at No.4, but in the game before that, he was sent in at No.6. Question is will the Knights try him as an opener in the remaining games of IPL 2022? They have already experimented with multiple opening pairs this year, so giving the experienced Rana a chance at the top shouldn’t be a big gamble for the Shreyas Iyer-captained team.

But then, removing Rana from the middle may also severely weaken the spine of the Knights’ batting attack. It’s a tough call.