“Giving someone the label of a finisher is not right,” Sunil Gavaskar not happy with batting order of Rajasthan Royals against KKR

The Indian legend Sunil Gavaskar was not happy with the batting order of Rajasthan Royals in the game against KKR yesterday as he thought Riyan Parag should have been batting slightly higher up the order after the kind of form he had shown with the bat against RCB.

After Rajasthan lost a couple of early wickets yesterday, they decided to slot Karun Nair at no. 4. Nair is more experienced as compared to Parag, but he hasn’t played a lot of games this IPL, while Parag has been hitting the ball crisply and has already got a half-century to his name.

According to Sunil Gavaskar, the reason why Riyan Parag was not slotted at no. 4 is that he is now seen by everyone as a finisher and the general theory is that a finisher can’t walk out to bat before the 14th or the 15th over of the innings.

But, in Gavaskar’s opinion, which he expressed while speaking on Star Sports during the mid innings break, labeling someone as finisher and then sending him to bat only lower down the order is not right and it’s particularly not right in case of a young player.

“Send in-form players up the order”, Sunil Gavaskar asks Rajasthan Royals

Sunil Gavaskar stressed the point that teams should always slot in-form players up the order. Whichever batsman is in form should play maximum deliveries in the innings and in this case, Parag was in form and if he had batted at no. 4, rather than Karun who was making a comeback to the team, Rajasthan might have got a few more runs.

Riyan Parag eventually batted at no. 5 and scored 19 runs off 12 balls with a couple of big sixes, but his contribution was not enough to drag Rajasthan Royals to a par score, as they could manage just 152 runs in their 20 overs and KKR chased it down with 7 wickets in hand.