Karnataka look to stay on track against Railways

Bengaluru: The Karnataka team will have to put behind the bizarre but scary incident, involving their regular skipper Mayank Agarwal, and focus on setting themselves up for a push to the Ranji Trophy knockouts when they take on Railways from Friday.

Having witnessed their captain deplaned due to a medical emergency, it can’t be easy to get on with their job, but coach PV Shashikanth insisted that that’s exactly what they intend to do under stand-in captain Nikin Jose. 

Though he described the incident as ‘tragic’, the coach was pushing to put the incident behind him and look at what they could do in the days to come. 

Karnataka are second behind Tamil Nadu in Group C with 15 points (same as the table-toppers), but their run quotient languishes at 1.236 as opposed to their arch-rivals’ 2.246. 

Those numbers are an accurate summary of Karnataka’s struggles four games into the season. With two games to follow after the contest against Railways, every day, every session, becomes crucial to their knockout chances. 

In the absence of Agarwal, who has struck two hundreds and a fifty this season, the returning Manish Pandey and the likes will have to take on more responsibility as the seniors in the side. That sentiment extends more so to R Samarth, who has had a rather bleak season (122 runs in three games) so far. 

The younger lot which has been injected into the side for the season have not had enough time in the sun to guess their trajectory, but the management seems to be convinced that they have the tools. 

As many as four players - Hardik Raj, Kishan Bedare, Shashi Kumar and KV Aneesh - were handed debuts in Karnataka’s previous game against Tripura, and they might well be persisted with. 

Even if all these movements involving batters and the spinners could seem unsettling, the fact that Karnataka’s pace trio of V Koushik, Vidwath Kaverappa and Vyshak Vijaykumar are unrelenting with their performances is inspiring.

In fact, the only time they lost this season (against Gujarat) was when one of the trio - Kaverappa - was not available for selection. It didn’t help that Prasidh Krishna was injured after bowling less than 15 overs in the first innings. 

Karnataka have struggled to maintain a good balance for a number of years now, owing to players with National duties and injuries. This season is much the same, but the injection of youth could well solve that problem. 

Now to see if they can deliver on what is expected of them.