Rishabh Pant will deservingly get his big gloves and batting position back but Dhruv Jurel’s superb run of form is unlikely to be ignored by the Indian team management and national selection committee as he will purely play as a batter in the upcoming two-Test series against South Africa. While Jurel had kept wickets in the last three Tests for India – London (Oval), Ahmedabad and Delhi – when Pant was recuperating from an ankle fracture, the vice-captain’s comeback has made the selection of the playing eleven a bit dicey going into the first Test in Kolkata starting in less than a week’s time.
Since the start of the home season, Jurel’s sequence of scores are 140, 1 & 56, 125, 44 & 6, 132 & 127 not out. With three hundreds, including a Test ton, one half-century and one 40-plus score in last eight first-class knocks, Jurel couldn’t have been ignored.
“Jurel is likely to play as a specialist batter. Ideally, there are two slots where he could be fitted in. One was Sai Sudharsan at No. 3 but he has a half-century in his last Test and the team management wants a settled No. 3,” a BCCI source privy to the selection developments told PTI on condition of anonymity.
“The other place is Nitish Kumar Reddy and he can’t be played ahead of Jurel considering that his bowling won’t be required much in these Indian conditions,” he added.
It is understood that there were serious deliberations about playing Devdutt Padikkal in the Delhi Test match after Reddy was given only four overs of bowling in Ahmedabad and that too in the first innings.
At the Kotla, he was promoted up the order to get some batting time but wasn’t given a chance to bowl.
While Gautam Gambhir is bullish about batting till No.8, even the head coach is expected to give Jurel a longer run in the middle order considering that India will play with three spinners and two pace bowlers.
While Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Dinesh Karthik, Dhoni and Parthiv Patel, Dhoni and Rishabh Pant have been part of the same white-ball eleven for India at different times, there aren’t too many instances of two specialist keepers in the Test playing eleven.
In 1986, Kiran More and Chandrakant Pandit did play a couple of Tests (one in England and one in India) with the latter playing as a specialist batter.