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Sanjay Manjrekar wants India to shuffle their batting order for the third time because of Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul’s contrasting forms.
Will India change their batting order again on Monday?
Former India batter Sanjay Manjrekar wants India to shift their top-order combination again ahead of the fifth day of the fourth Test in the 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). He believes putting KL Rahul back to opening to ‘restore a little more confidence’, with skipper Rohit Sharma dropping to one-down.
India have already shuffled the top-order twice in this series. Rohit, the regular opener, missed the Perth Test and Rahul opened in his place. When he came back, he went to number six. But after failures in Adelaide and Brisbane, he went back to the top at the MCG, pushing Rahul to three. While Rohit scored 3 (5), Rahul got out for 24 (42).
“Ideally, you would want KL Rahul back at the top because it’s important to have an opening start,” Manjrekar told Star Sports. “With the kind of form Rohit Sharma has been in, you are hoping against hope that he has another long innings under his belt. Rahul at the top restores a little more confidence, and it’s been a successful opening pair in the series. That could happen and No.3 for Rohit may not be too different from batting at the top of the order.”
Rahul is India’s third-highest run-scorer with 259 runs at an average of 43.17. He was India’s best batter in Perth when most of the others struggled to adjust to the bounce, and again in Brisbane, when he was one of the only two Indians to score more than 50 runs.
Manjrekar also believes that the ‘real’ danger for Australia would be in dealing with India’s deep lower order with the old ball.
“But the real dangerman apart from the top four are people like Pant, who is used to playing a great innings. As the Kookaburra ball gets soft, you have got three guys Australia will find it tough to get out — Jadeja, Reddy and Sundar. With the Indian batting running deep and with a soft Kookaburra ball, Australia will have to bowl really well to clean up the entire Indian batting lineup,” he added.
Australia were ahead by 333 runs with a second-innings score of 228/9 at Stumps on Sunday. India will require a Test-record chase to win the Test.
