Nitish Kumar Reddy, the all-rounder who hardly bowls. The 22-year-old has bowled 100.1 overs in 20 innings. The number is fine if one’s talking about white-ball cricket, but considering Nitish features primarily in Test cricket, the number’s way too low.
While one can critique his bowling, you have to take note of his usage. You don’t develop until you actually play. Nitish travels with the team instead of playing domestic cricket, and when picked, hardly bowls.
Suboptimal usage of Nitish Reddy
He’s slotted lower down the order to bat, which makes him a bowling all-rounder who rarely bowls. It’s a dilemma. His usage neither gives him nor the management any confidence.
That’s why Irfan Pathan has criticised the decision to exclude him from the India vs New Zealand 1st ODI. In Hardik Pandya’s absence, Nitish should be the first name on the team sheet as his future replacement. But that isn’t the case in Vadodara, as Washington Sundar was picked ahead of him.
The former Indian all-rounder wasn’t pleased with how the management picks him time and again but benches him. Pathan questioned how Nitish would improve if all he did was bowl in the nets and never face the music in tough positions.
“If you don’t play him, you can’t groom him as an all-rounder. He gets picked, travels with the team, but doesn’t feature in the XI. There must be some reason why he isn’t getting picked,” Irfan said on JioHotstar.
India playing XI
Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gil (c), Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer (vc), KL Rahul (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar, Harshit Rana, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna
Bench: Nitish Kumar Reddy, Arshdeep Singh, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Dhruv Jurel (wk)
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