IND Tour of SA: Rohit Sharma has been ruled out of South Africa tour due to injury. In his place, 31-year-old Priyank Panchal has been included in the team. Priyank was recently the captain of the India-A team on the tour of South Africa. He had scored 96 runs while opening in a match. Apart from this, there are many other big reasons for his selection in the team.
New Delhi. Rohit Sharma has been ruled out of the 3-Test series against South Africa due to injury. Gujarat captain and opener Priyank Panchal has been included in the team as his replacement. Priyank was also the captain of the India-A team that recently toured South Africa. He scored 120 runs in three innings at an average of 40. During this, he also played an innings of 96 runs. Now the question is arising that why was the 31-year-old Priyank given place as an alternative to Rohit Sharma? What is so special about this batsman that he was included in the team as a substitute for Rohit. While he has neither played T20 nor ODI for India so far.
There are 5 solid reasons to choose Priyank Panchal as Rohit Sharma’s replacement. The first is that he recently went on a tour of South Africa with the India-A team. There he played an innings of 96 runs while opening. It is not easy to score 96 runs while opening in front of South Africa’s bouncy pitch and fast pace bowlers. This can only be done by a batsman who is technically strong and who already has experience of playing international bowlers. Priyank fits perfectly on both these parameters.
Priyank has long experience of playing abroad
The second major reason for Priyank’s selection in the Indian Test team is his long association with the India-A team. Priyank has toured many countries with the India-A team even before South Africa. He has earlier gone to West Indies in 2019 with the India-A team. He also played for India A at home against Sri Lanka in the same year. Priyank batted brilliantly on both the occasions. Then in the unofficial Test against Sri Lanka-A, Priyank had scored 160 runs in a single day.
At that time, there were also spinners like Akila Dhananjaya and Lakshan Sandakan in the Sri Lanka-A team. Even veteran batsmen had trouble playing them. Facing him, Priyank played such a big innings. Then India defeated Sri Lanka-A 2-0.
Apart from this, Priyank also played an important role in India-A’s victory in 2 unofficial Tests on West Indies tour. Then he scored fifty in both the innings of the second Test in Port of Spain. In the first innings, he scored 58 runs after losing 5 wickets for 20 runs.
Priyank is scoring runs in first class cricket
The third thing that went in favor of Priyank, is that for the last few years he has been included in the Duleep Trophy and among the highest run-scorers for India-A. Priyank first came into the limelight in the 2016-17 Ranji Trophy season. Then he had scored 1310 runs for Gujarat. Gujarat became the champion that year. Since then, he has scored more runs than any batsman in a first-class match in India despite battling malaria. This clearly means that he had to make a place in the India-A team again and he did so by scoring consecutive runs in domestic cricket. He was also Gujarat’s top scorer in Ranji Trophy in 2017-18. He had scored 542 runs in 7 matches. In 2018-19 too, he scored 898 runs in 9 matches.
Rahul Dravid’s support also came in handy
Rahul Dravid has spent a lot of time with the India A team as a coach. He has been with this team from 2015 to 2019. During this, Priyank Panchal has emerged as a batsman. In such a situation, Dravid also knows very well about the game of this batsman. Priyank himself has also said this earlier that he has got to learn a lot from Dravid. He disclosed this in an interview.
Panchal had told, “When I became the captain of the India-A team for the first time. Then Dravid came to the team’s practice session and all he told me was ‘don’t be too hasty’; I know you are the captain and you have been given a chance, but it is not necessary to try to do too many things at once. I was doing this then. I was quite relieved by his advice.
Priyank’s experience of playing 100 first class matches
Priyank has experience of playing 100 first class matches. In this, he has scored a total of 7011 runs with 24 centuries and 25 half-centuries. During this his average has been 45.52. At the same time, he also bowls medium pace. He has so far taken 14 wickets in first class cricket.
