Ishan Kishan's intriguing absence

Bengaluru: It needed an unfortunate saga for the Board of Control for Cricket in India to mandate in the much-needed policy of making domestic red-ball cricket mandatory for cricketers who aren't part of the national squads or rehabilitating at the National Cricket Academy while giving concession to players with brittle bodies (read Hardik Pandya).

Ever since the advent of the Indian Premier League, the unhealthy trend of giving the Ranji Trophy a miss has been on the rise. With much name, fame and money at stake in the IPL, many cricketers have avoided participating in the most prestigious domestic tournament to keep themselves fresh and fit for the richest T20 caravan, even if they have no other commitments or are not carrying injuries. 

The BCCI ought to have cracked the whip on such cricketers long back, but it needed an Ishan Kishan fiasco for the Board to finally get its act together. It's a different matter Kishan is still not playing in the Ranji Trophy (we will come to that later), but it was a decision long overdue.      

The larger issue, though, is what exactly is happening with the Jharkhand wicketkeeper-batter, who was a like-for-like replacement for the injured Rishabh Pant? Kishan, the owner of an ODI double hundred, would have walked into the current Indian Test XI, but a string of avoidable events has ensured that the 25-year-old isn't even a part of the 17-member squad. Instead, he is preparing for the ensuing IPL in Vadodara. 

Just to refresh the sequence of events leading to this intriguing rigmarole. In December, when the Indian team was in the middle of an all-format tour of South Africa, Kishan requested the BCCI to release him from the squad for personal reasons. Since then, he has been ignored for two home series -- the T20 showdown against Afghanistan and the ongoing Test series against England. During the course of the Afghanistan series, head coach Rahul Dravid had clarified that Kishan needed to play domestic cricket to be reconsidered for selection to the senior national team as he had taken a break on his own volition. Dravid made his stance clear again, with a little annoyance, at the start of the England Test series in Hyderabad that Kishan had to play "some cricket" to come into reckoning.                 

With the Ranji Trophy season just about to begin after Dravid's first missive, one would have expected Kishan to turn up for Jharkhand, but he neither heeded the team management's directive nor the BCCI's diktat. He is only expected to return to competitive cricket for his employers, RBI, at the DY Patil T20 tournament in Mumbai; surely, it can't be the "some cricket" Dravid had alluded to for a Test return. Meanwhile, Kishan has decided to train at the Kiran More academy where Hardik, the newly-appointed Mumbai Indians' captain, is also training. More is an MI scout and India skipper Rohit Sharma, who led MI till last season, would know first-hand the Kishan tale.   

Before judging Kishan's rather brazen decision to skip the Ranji Trophy, it is also important to look at the circumstances that potentially may have led to the southpaw taking such an extreme step.

Jitesh Sharma, who was looked at as a finisher in the lead-up to the T20 World Cup, had become the preferred wicketkeeper-batter in T20s, KL Rahul had proved his worth as a stumper-batter in the 50-over format and kept wickets in Tests as well against South Africa. For someone who had made an unbeaten 52 in his last Test against West Indies in Port of Spain; for someone who had struck a run-a-ball 47 against Afghanistan in October in a World Cup match as a replacement for the dengue-hit Shubman Gill and for someone who had scored a 39-ball 58 and a 32-ball 52 in two of his last three T20Is at home against Australia in the immediacy of the World Cup to not find a firm footing in the playing XI may have caused a great deal of mental agony. Just to play the Devil's advocate, he may have felt his contributions weren’t given the weightage they deserved and could have been left emotionally drained, forcing him to take a leave of absence.

While that's in the realm of assumption, it's clear from the unfolding of events that the issue could have been handled better. A lot of egos are at play, not least that of the player himself. It's not certain if he was told that KL Rahul wouldn't be keeping in Tests during the England series. At least the media was told about it on the eve of the first Test in Hyderabad, and if Kishan had been informed that he would be keeping wickets against England, would he still have missed red-ball cricket? Like most things with Indian cricket, it's all a matter of speculation and conjecture but Kishan is the biggest loser in this battle of BCCI-sized egos. Kishan, or whoever his advisors are, should have known better than to do what he is up to.

In the meanwhile, Dhruv Jurel showed enough promise with the bat in the third Test after replacing KS Bharat. Jurel could just be the new jewel, but where does that leave Kishan? On the sidelines, to keep nursing his bruised ego?