T20 World Cup: How KKR's Rinku Singh lost India spot to CSK's Shivam Dube

For three years in a row, Rinku Singh was the most committed and hard-working member of the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) outfit. He was the first to a practice session, he was the last to leave the ground. He turned up for optional nets, he watched and observed, and as much as his shyness allowed him to, he asked questions and took the answers to heart.

During those three years, the left-hander from Uttar Pradesh hardly got a decent run. Just 10 games between 2018 and 2020, well-spaced out, didn’t give him the opportunity to present his case, though, within the franchise, he had earned the respect of all concerned with his ready smile, his willingness to do everything and more than what was asked of him, and his energy and enthusiasm when he came on to field as a substitute.

His reward had to come at some stage, right?

That transpired in 2022. KKR were on a hiding to nothing, their campaign spiralling out of control. Almost in desperation, they threw Rinku into the deep end and the young man didn’t disappoint. In seven innings, he made 174 runs, striking at 148.72. Finally allowed to show what he was made of, Rinku did precisely that.

Rinku's five sixes in a row

As it turned out, 2022 was only the trailer. The following year, Rinku took the IPL by storm, with 474 runs from 14 innings. His strike-rate was an impressive 149.53, he smashed 31 fours and 29 sixes in 317 deliveries. Among them were five sixes in a row, off the last five balls of the match, off left-arm paceman Yash Dayal which muscled KKR to an unlikely victory over Gujarat Titans (GT). Rinku had arrived, emphatically.

To no one’s surprise, he made his T20I debut in Ireland in August last year, hammering 38 off just 21 deliveries in his first bat at the highest level. That those runs came at No. 5 at a time when Rishabh Pant was recovering from his horrendous car crash and India were in desperate search-mode for finishers elevated Rinku’s stocks.

Over the next five months, Rinku went about establishing himself as the go-to man towards the tail-end of the innings. In 11 innings, he eked out 356 runs; seven not outs bolstered his average to 89, and 31 fours and 20 sixes in 202 deliveries contributed to a stunning strike-rate of 176.23. In India’s last international fixture before the T20 World Cup, against Afghanistan in Bengaluru in January, he lashed 69 not out off 39 after walking in at 22 for four, helping his captain Rohit Sharma add 190 to haul India to 212 for four. Surely, Rinku was a certainty for the World Cup, right?

Wrong. To the great dismay of the 26-year-old, his family, his millions of supporters and to the cricketing firmament at large, Ajit Agarkar’s selection panel couldn’t accommodate Rinku in their plans. Shocking? Maybe at one level. Unavoidable? Perhaps not. But that’s how the cookie crumbles in professional sport sometimes.

How Shivam Dube got the nod

With the benefit of hindsight, one discerns that Rinku was in a straight fight with Shivam Dube for the middle- to end-overs slot in the World Cup squad. Beyond the fact that both are left-handers, there isn’t a great deal of similarity between them. Dube is tall and rangy, is an accomplished destroyer of spin and has upped his game against the short ball by leaps and bounds. Rinku is equally at home against spin and pace, targeting areas that Dube can’t. Rinku is the better fielder but Dube can offer a couple of overs of medium-pace, if required. And in a country where cricketers of that ilk – batsmen who can chip in with handy medium-pace – are in a great minority, that eventually became Dube’s USP, the additional string that earned him a ticket to the Americas.

Oh, that, and the IPL.

Come again, you say? All right, then.

Dube has hit it lucky with Chennai Super Kings (CSK), who have maximised his potential for damage by giving him the No. 4 spot. His confidence bolstered and his ball-striking embellished by hours at nets under the watchful eyes of seasoned coach Stephen Fleming, Dube has grown beyond recognition as a T20 ball-basher. In IPL 2024, he has amassed 350 runs, inclusive of three half-centuries, and is striking at nearly 172 runs per every 100 balls faced.

Compare these with Rinku’s corresponding numbers this season. Where Dube has had the luxury of batting out 204 balls at his elevated number, Rinku has faced less than half that figure. The success at the top of the batting order of Sunil Narine and Phil Salt, coupled with the presence of Andre Russell, that fearsome ball-striker, have restricted Rinku’s stay in the middle to 82 deliveries in eight innings – on an average, that’s 10 balls an innings. His 123 runs have come at a strike-rate of 150, again well below Dube’s stats. If this is a straight fight, as it turned out to be, there would be only one winner.

Rinku among India reserves

What’s been so good for KKR hasn’t turned out great either for Rinku, or for the Indian World Cup team. Rinku has been named in the reserves and might yet get his shot at glory, but for now, he will nurse a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach, his predicament stemming from a series of unfortunate (for him) developments rather than a dramatic loss of form.

There is one school of thought which believes the selectors could have picked both Dube and Rinku, but that would have required jettisoning Yashasvi Jaiswal, most possibly, and uniting Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli at the top of the batting order. But Jaiswal’s left-handedness made him hard to overlook. He and Rohit have the trappings of a crack opening duo and to shake things up with the World Cup imminent seemed too big a punt from the larger perspective. Team balance dictated that despite his middling run in the IPL, Hardik Pandya had to be accommodated – he is, after all, a genuine all-rounder – which further impacted Rinku’s chances of selection.

Rinku has no option but to take his blow on the chin and keep biding his time. It’s an unfair cut, and certainly not of the Aligarh man’s making. But life can be like that sometimes, and no one knows that better than Rinku himself. After all, isn’t it always the darkest before dawn?