Bengal opening batter Abhimanyu Easwaran put in a stellar performance in the Irani Cup final for Rest of India against Mumbai. But why is he still uncapped for India?
Easwaran has started the 2024-25 domestic season with a bang. After a couple of low scores in his first Duleep Trophy match, the opener has reeled off scores of 157*, 116, 19 and 191.
In his last Ranji Trophy appearance of the previous season against Bihar in February, he scored an unbeaten double century. Since the start of 2023, he has scored 1760 runs at an average of 62.9, and since the start of this calendar year, 921 runs at 76.8.
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Across a first-class career spanning nearly eleven years now, Easwaran's batting average sits at 49.4 – not shabby at all for an opening batter in an era where Indian pace bowling is as healthy as it as ever been.
Despite this excellent record, Easwaran is yet to play for India. Since he made his first-class debut, 13 Indians have opened the batting in Test cricket, with seven of them playing ten or more innings at this position. Two of them, Shubman Gill and KL Rahul have moved down the order while Murali Vijay and Shikhar Dhawan have retired. Mayank Agarwal is still active in domestic cricket, and the other two are Rohit Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal – India's current opening pair.
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Has Abhimanyu Easwaran been unfairly ignored?
On the face of it, Easwaran has been disregarded, perhaps unfairly, for a good while now. But this may not quite be the case.
It would be inaccurate to say that the Indian selectors (whichever batch of them) have ignored or not been aware of Easwaran and his performances. He was picked for India's 'A' team for the first time in July 2018, and since then has played for the development side on 26 occasions, averaging 42.
Easwaran was also part of the outfit that took on England Lions at home in January this year. He failed to impress in that series though, recording the following scores – 4, 0, 58, 0, 22. On the 'A' tour of South Africa in December, he played one innings and scored 18.
There is an intriguing trend present in his first-class record, though.
Abhimanyu Easwaran: Recognised but not rewarded
The alternate peaks and troughs indicate one of the most dangerous attributes for an Indian batter to have – inconsistency. Easwaran has periods where everything goes right for him, and he piles on the runs – like at the end of 2022, when he reeled off the following scores for India 'A' and Bengal in a row; 141, 157, 170, 165, 82.
But in similar fashion, he can have some quite low troughs. For example, in 2019-20, he once went 21 innings with just one half-century.
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His highs have been rewarded with India call-ups in the past. In May 2021, he was one of India's stand-by players on the Test team's tour of England. In December 2022, he was called up for the second Test against Bangladesh as injury cover for Rohit Sharma. Rohit did not play the match, but the team management stuck to KL Rahul (captain for the series) and Shubman Gill (coming off the back of a century) as openers.
In December last year, Easwaran was pipped to the backup opener's post for the tour of South Africa by Ruturaj Gaikwad, but eventually made it to the Rainbow Nation after the latter was ruled out through injury. He did not make it to the playing XI though.
Even now, there is no real case for Easwaran to be in India's playing XI over either Rohit Sharma or Yashasvi Jaiswal. He does have a strong case to be the backup opener for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, though. At every turn this season, he has outperformed Gaikwad, who was picked ahead of him last time out. Now 29 years old, he should theoretically be close to his peak as a batter as well.
The concern for the selectors will be whether Easwaran is able to buck the trend that has followed him so far, of a string of low scores after a solid period.
But if he is not picked while on an upward trajectory, when else could it make sense?
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