Former Indian batsman and chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar feels if the Indian selectors have to pick Ruturaj Gaikwad in the ODI squad, then this is the right time to pick him because he is at an ideal age for senior-level international cricket. He is not a teenager that the selectors can wait and get him into the team later.
According to Vengsarkar, when an 18-19-year-old teenager scores runs at junior levels and bursts onto the scene that way, you can think of waiting for some time before drafting him into the senior team, as you would want to see if he can be consistent coming through the ranks.
But, in Ruturaj’s case, he has scored runs everywhere. He scored three back to back fifties in his first IPL season in 2020, then he was the orange cap winner in IPL 2021 before he got back to the domestic circuit again and piled a mountain of runs in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and Vijay Hazare trophy.
Ruturaj honed his skills in Vengsarkar’s academy in Pune when he was coming through as a junior cricketer and Vengsarkar is aware of the abilities of the classy right-hander, who is also the captain of Maharashtra’s 20-over and 50-over teams these days.
Dilip Vengsarkar feels Ruturaj has done enough to be in India’s ODI squad
Vengsarkar doesn’t think a young cricketer needs to do anything more than what Ruturaj has done already to find a place in the national ODI squad.
Ruturaj made his T20I debut for India on the Sri Lanka tour last summer, but that was mainly due to the absence of the senior players who were in England to play the test series. The 24-year-old didn’t get a playing opportunity recently when he was picked for the T20I series against New Zealand.
“He (Gaikwad) can bat at no. 3 also. He must be accommodated in the team. It’s not like he’s 18 or 19. He’s 24 now. There’s no point picking him when he’ll be 28,” Vengsarkar was quoted as saying by Times of India.
When Dilip Vengsarkar was the chief selector of India back in 2008, the selection committee had taken a lot of bold decisions and had picked a fairly young team under MS Dhoni, a team, which for the first time ever, beat Australia in the best of three finals of a triangular ODI series.
The former Indian captain and the current BCCI president Sourav Ganguly was dropped from the 50-over squad of India at that time and the selection committee later took a call on the ODI future of Rahul Dravid as well, as more youngsters were slotted in the middle order in the build-up to the World Cup 2011.
