India made two changes to the Playing XI - Riyan Parag and Rishabh Pant came in replacing Arshdeep Singh and KL Rahul.
The Indian selectors and the management decided to handover India youngster Riyan Parag his ODI debut for the decider final game of the three-match series against Sri Lanka.
India made two changes to the Playing XI – Riyan Parag and Rishabh Pant came in replacing Arshdeep Singh and KL Rahul.
However, the decision to drop KL Rahul ahead of young cricketers like Riyan and Shivam Dube got flak from former India pacer Dodda Ganesh.
Taking to social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Ganesh wrote,
“Only in a crazy universe will u have Dube and Riyan Parag playing ahead of KL Rahul, in a decider ODI. Don’t understand what’s happening. He was leading India just 3 ODIs ago and all of a sudden, one failure & he is out of the playing XI. Ridiculous is an understatement.”
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KL Rahul, who returned to the Indian team after featuring in the England Test series earlier this year, has yet to make a significant impact. In the first two game he played, Rahul, like most of his fellow batters, has struggled to make a meaningful contribution on spin-friendly pitches.
It is understoon KL Rahul’s lacklustre performance in the initial matches led to him getting dropped in the final ODI.
Speaking about the match, Lankan openers Avishka Fernando and Pathum Nissanka gave the hosts a solid start with a 89-run opening stand. Avishka formed another meaningful partnership with Kusal Mendis for 82 runs.
However, unfortunately Avishka fell just shy of a century, departing on 96 after getting trapped lbw by Riyan Parag.
The wicket shifted the momentum towards India and they made inroads, picking up 4 wickets for just 28 runs to reduce Sri Lanka to 199 for 6.
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