Dhruv Jurel paradox leaves India in a fix because he is too good to keep out of the side, and too good to just keep.
India find themselves in what we call a Dhruv Jurel Paradox.
It was clear even in January 2020 that Dhruv Jurel had big ambitions..
Jurel has played seven Test matches in his 1.5-year international career, all but one of which have been during Pant’s forced absence. For the wicketkeeping understudy, this is usually life. It was uncommon for regular keepers to be proficient enough with the bat to regularly play Test matches as pure batters over a large portion of cricket’s history. Keeping is a specialised job.
Naturally, it has grown much more prevalent in recent years, and Test sides now frequently line up with one keeper who keeps and one or even two who don’t. Kyle Verreynne, a goalie, and Ryan Rickelton, a non-keeper, are expected to line up for South Africa at Eden Gardens on Friday.
On the other hand, India hasn’t had much experience with non-keeping Test keepers. Just two of the 13 Indian players who have maintained wicket in ten or more Test matches have done it in non-emergency scenarios.
All of this means that Jurel might start a Test series as a non-keeping middle-order batter ahead of specialist candidates in the squad against South Africa on Friday, something that no India Test keeper with a career of any real length has done before (sorry, Chandrakant Pandit). And since Jurel has made it nearly difficult for him to be left out, it will occur if it does.
Prior to India A’s first unofficial Test match against Australia A on September 15, Jurel had an average of 47.34 and one century in 25 first-class matches. Since then, Jurel has scored 140, 1, 56, 125, 44, 6, 132, and 127* in five first-class matches, including two Test matches against the West Indies, when he hit the 125, and India A matches against Australia A and South Africa A. He now has a first-class average of 58.00.
How can you exclude someone who has demonstrated time and time again that he is completely comfortable playing Test cricket? In just his second Test, this player turned the tide of the contest and won Player of the contest on a challenging, low-bounce pitch. Someone who, against South Africa A in his most recent game, scored a day-one century on a greentop when no other Indian Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Padikkal, and Pant were among the players in their XI who went over 24.
India must have been really near to coming to the decision that, in reality, you don’t leave out such a guy and that you find any method to select him. Additionally, there is a fairly simple way and a fairly obvious player to exclude, so they probably won’t have to think too long or hard about how they can accomplish this.
Nitish Kumar Reddy appeared to be a luxury player chosen by India because they could afford to select him during the Test match against the West Indies. During the West Indies series, Jurel batted above all three all-rounders and appeared to be a perfect fit in that role, with the exception of one innings when India promoted Reddy to give him batting time.
Throughout his career, Jurel has been viewed by those with a thorough understanding of the game as a talent worth pursuing. Even though he had only played three T20 games, the Rajasthan Royals selected him as an Impact Player or in their XIs when they already had two keeper-batters as good as Sanju Samson and Jos Buttler.
So far, Jurel hasn’t given the wise heads who have made them any reason to question their judgement despite so many leaps of faith. It’s another leap of faith to choose him now as a specialist batter in a Test XI that also includes Pant, but it can’t be too tough.