India vs Sri Lanka: Rahul or Pant? India's wicket-keeping riddle

Six matches. That’s all that remain between now and the Champions Trophy, the second-most prestigious 50-over tournament, starting towards the end of February. It’s these six One-Day Internationals that India will use to come up with what they believe is the perfect 15 that will help them regain the trophy they last won outright in 2013, after having shared it with Sri Lanka in 2002.

The big boys are back in India’s ODI side, among them Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer and KL Rahul. While Rohit and Kohli have retired from Twenty20 Internationals, Iyer and Rahul currently aren’t in favour when it comes to the shortest format.

Iyer’s return is significant because not long back, he was dropped from the list of centrally contracted players, ostensibly for refusing to play in the Ranji Trophy for Mumbai. It must be presumed that all is now forgiven, if not forgotten. It’s worth remembering, too, that new head coach Gautam Gambhir was the mentor when the Iyer-led Kolkata Knight Riders to the IPL title towards the end of March.

Core of team for Champions Trophy

With the exception of Jasprit Bumrah and potentially Mohammed Shami, the 15 in Sri Lanka for a three-match series starting on Friday (August 2) will form the core of the Champions Trophy squad, all other things being equal. India’s only other ODI assignment before the big-ticket event is a home series against England in February, too close to the Champions Trophy for it to be an experimental outing.

Rohit is loath to view this series as a preparatory exercise for the tougher challenges ahead.

“This is not a practice ground, it is an international game,” he said, somewhat testily, on Thursday (August 1). “We will keep in mind what we want to get out of this series, but it’s not a practice for anything. When you represent the country, every international is important. We are not here to chill in Colombo. The standard of Indian cricket is more important; we will not be compromising on those standards.”

Who should be the wicketkeeper-batter?

One of the big decisions ahead of Rohit and Gambhir is who the wicketkeeper-batter should be. Rishabh Pant’s return from injury has queered the pitch somewhat, because in his absence, and even when he was available previously, KL Rahul had performed in stellar fashion both behind and in front of the stumps. From being a "makeshift” keeper, the Karnataka man has evolved into a “proper” gloveman, as much at home standing back to the plethora of top-class quicks in the Indian team as standing up the stumps to the likes of Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, and Axar Patel.

Rahul’s figures

Rahul will, and should, feel desperately unlucky if he loses out to Pant. He has kept in nearly half of all his ODIs – 35 out of 75 – and enjoys a better average as well as strike-rate as ’keeper as opposed to as a specialist batter. In the 35 games in which he has donned the big gloves, Rahul’s average is 58.91, strike-rate 92.61. Not only do they compare favourably with his overall average of 50.35 and career ODI strike-rate of 87.82, they are far superior to the corresponding numbers of 44.39 and 83.81 respectively when he has played as a pure batter. This much is clear – India are better off when Rahul plays as a wicketkeeper-batter in ODIs.

Pant took time to find his feet

But are India better off with Rahul than with Pant? Despite making his ODI debut in October 2018, the young man from Delhi has played only 30 matches, the first seven as a specialist batter when Mahendra Singh Dhoni was still around. Like Rahul, he too has better numbers in his 23 outings as the designated stumper; where seven matches as a specialist batter produced just 157 runs, Pant has made 708 runs at 37.26 and a strike-rate of 108.92 in his 23 encounters in the other avatar.

Having taken time to find his feet in the 50-over format – like his great Delhi colleague Virender Sehwag, he too seemed to want to do too much in too short a span of time – Pant was just beginning to get the hang of the art of building an innings when the terrible road accident of December 2022 turned his world upside down. Just five months previously, he had smashed his maiden ODI ton against England in Manchester and might have engaged Rahul in a close contest for the stumper-batter’s position at the World Cup had he not been forced into a lengthy period of recovery and rehabilitation.

Pros and cons

Rohit and Gambhir will weigh up the pros and cons: Does Rahul’s superior record carry more weightage than Pant’s left-handedness and the ability to make the extraordinary seem commonplace? Or is Pant’s X-factor such a clincher that for all his magnificence over the last year and a half, Rahul must be forced to cede wicketkeeping responsibilities?

Rohit chose to play his cards close to his chest, refusing to provide even a hint about which way the think-tank was inclined.

“It is a tough call, both are quality players,” he stated the obvious. “You know the ability of both players. It is not easy to pick a player when you have such options. They are match-winners in their own way. (But) It is nice to have a problem in selecting an XI. That means we have quality in the team. It’s a good thing to have these kinds of problems till I’m the captain. As of now, I am not sure what we are going to do, you will see it tomorrow when we play the game (whether Rahul or Pant will keep).”

Easy way out – to play both

The easy way out would entail playing both - handing the gloves to Pant - alongside Iyer, which will leave India with only five specialist bowling options. At the World Cup, the five-bowler formula worked wonders once Hardik Pandya was ruled out through injury, but among that quintet were Bumrah and Shami. Without them, the bowling doesn’t possess the same class or venom.

It could be argued that against a Sri Lankan batting unit determined to lend new meaning to the term hara-kiri, India won’t shortchange themselves if they don’t have an insurance bowling choice. But it isn’t about this series alone, therefore the long-term ramifications will be considered before India settle one way or the other. The head may point towards Rahul, the heart might root for Pant. Which way are you inclined?