New Delhi: Ajinkya Rahane seems to be living in a bubble these days, a common characteristic with some of the accomplished Indian cricketers.
The “bubble” is a shield for them to deflect any proverbial “outside noise” which in another world means valid criticism that one doesn’t want to hear.
There have been many instances when teams have had horrible start to their IPL campaigns but never has a team looked so disjointed and a captain so clueless and with a batting approach as archaic as the inception of Indian Premier League.
Truth be told, the grammar of T20 batting has been changed upside down by the young turks like Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan and now Vaibhav Sooryavanshi has taken it to an altogether different level. Not to forget the Ayush Mhatres and Priyansh Aryas.
At 37, Rahane is simply incapable of playing the catch-up game or mould his batting philosophy, which is based on muscle memory built over the past 20 years.
There are serious questions being raised on how Rahane could remain the captain of this side when he shouldn’t be making the squad as a batter.
In five games, Rahane has managed only seven sixes but what is more baffling is that he has been able to hit only eight boundaries. For a top-order batter, who is either opening or coming in at No.3, an average of three boundaries (fours or sixes) per game is criminal at this level.
The strike-rate of less than 150, which perhaps was good enough in pre-Covid days, is only cutting a sorry picture for the man, who is a respected former Test skipper with 80 plus red ball games for the country.
Rahane is simply tarnishing his reputation but his biggest lifeline is being the ‘TINA’ (There Is No Alternative) for KKR. With his deputy Rinku Singh in equally poor form, handling another player battling his own form is the last thing that KKR management would like to do.
In the whole set-up, the only other player with some experience of leadership is Rovman Powell, having captained West Indies in 37 T20I games and three ODIs.
His win percentage in T20Is is a modest 51 but at this moment, even Powell seems to be a better option.
With Rahane and head coach Abhishek Nayar’s protege Angkrish Raghuvanshi (current KKR top-scorer with 182 runs at SR of 155) both batting in the top four, the KKR team has never had impactful starts in most Powerplays like it happened at the Chepauk on Tuesday.
The buck does stop at CEO Venky Mysore and all the top honchos in KKR team management including Nayar for building a team where there are no suitable replacements.
Even if Rahane is benched, they don’t have quality Indian reserves who can just come and up the ante from game one. One young player with a lot of natural hitting potential is Tejasvi Dahiya of Delhi.
In all, the situation is looking grim for KKR and with Rahane at the helm, it seems like the campaign can go only in one direction — southwards.
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