KL Rahul’s place in the Indian team was a topic of debate after his failure in the first two Border-Gavaskar Trophy Tests against Australia and the right-hander eventually lost his spot to Shubman Gill in the third Test, which got underway on March 1 in Indore.

Despite his extended lean patch, Rahul was preferred in India’s starting XI over the in-form Gill in the first two Tests in Nagpur and Delhi, registering scores of 20, 17 and 1 across the three innings.

All this while, Rahul drew flak from the fans and cricket experts on social media. In particular, former India pace Venkatesh Prasad was critical of the opener’s place in the team.

During the first two Tests, Prasad tweeted long threads criticising the Indian team management for giving Rahul a long rope in the side when other in-form players are waiting to get a chance in the XI.  

After KL Rahul was dropped from the playing XI in Indore, cricket fans on Twitter joked that Venkatesh Prasad will be the happiest person on earth.

Here are the reactions:

Having taken an unbeaten 2-0 lead in the series, India made two changes to their playing XI for the third Test. While Gill replaced Rahul in the line-up, the hosts rested veteran pacer Mohammad Shami and brought in Umesh Yadav for the game.

India skipper Rohit Sharma won the toss and opted to bat first. Speaking at the toss, he talked about the team composition.

“We will have a bat first. It is a pretty good dressing room and like you said the morale is high. The guys are confident about their skills which is a good thing moving forward. We have played a lot of cricket (here) but this one (surface) is slightly different. Looks little dry and you have to adapt your skills and be at it all the time. We aren’t there yet (WTC final) and we have to come and win this game, we have to try and repeat the things we did in the first two Tests. It is important to stay present. We have made two changes - Gill comes in place of KL. We have rested Shami and Umesh comes in," Rohit said.

India’s playing XI for third Test: Rohit Sharma(c), Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Ravindra Jadeja, KS Bharat(w), Akshar Patel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Siraj