Former Pakistan captain and veteran batter Salman Butt wasn’t too impressed with KL Rahul’s captaincy in the first ODI against South Africa, and he has questioned Team India’s selection tactics after they lost the opening ODI by 31 runs in Paarl on January 19.
Notably, Virat Kohli had stepped down as India’s T20I captain after the T20 World Cup 2021, then he was removed from the ODI captaincy, and most recently, he decided to leave the Test captaincy as well.
Kohli’s decisions created a mess within the Indian cricket team, with the team management seemingly more focused on solving the things, but Butt found it unnecessary, saying it looks like a doctor giving medicine to a fully fit person and that India is just busy selecting a captain, not a team.
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His comments came after Team India’s lackluster performance in the first ODI, where neither the bowlers were impressive nor were there any contributions from the middle-order, as Rishabh Pant (16 off 22 balls) and Shreyas Iyer (17 from 17 deliveries) against South Africa.
Butt said on his YouTube channel: “It's like a doctor giving medicine to a fully fit person. This is one of those unfortunate reasons where everything seems upset. According to me, the immediate remedy is Rahul keeping the wickets and bat at his usual ODI position. India needs to add an extra batter at the top and include a genuine pace bowler in place of Bhuvneshwar. The batting order will be a bit longer and India will get a free-flowing player who can put some pressure on the opposition. Also, the middle-order will get loads of experience in presence of Rahul.”
He further explained, “The biggest problem for the selection committee was selecting the captain, not picking the team. They thought that everything will remain the same despite the change in leadership. Why fix something that's not broken? It was an untimely move and it's going to have repercussions. The team doesn't look in its comfort zone. We've been watching the Indian team for a year and it didn't look its energetic self against South Africa. The Indian middle-order lacks depth.”
The Pakistani cricketer further said that Pant needs to improve his fitness to take his game above. He added, “Pant needs to shape up physically. He's talented with every shot in his book but he needs to work on his fitness. That's not much to ask from a person who is playing at the international level. His game will elevate to a different level if he works on this aspect.”
The 37-year-old was also not happy that Venkatesh Iyer was not given a single over in the first ODI against South Africa. He opined: “Yes, Venkatesh should have bowled. When there's a partnership on the board, a team should try out different things. India is going by a similar trend in South Africa.”
Butt signed off by saying, “They persisted with Pujara & Rahane in the Test series and we are seeing a similar approach in the ODIs too. They haven't thought out of the box yet. The team doesn't want to tinker with anything when it has some unsettled issues. When you have a settled leader like Kohli or Rohit, they would have taken a different approach.”
