Social media is wrong! Ajinkya Rahane's selection for WTC final is not because of IPL 2023 exploits for CSK. Here's why

India's 15-member squad, announced on Tuesday, for the WTC final against Australia was as predictable as it could have been. No, Ajinkya Rahane's comeback to the Test side after 15 months was not a surprise and neither was it because of the 11 sixes he hit for Chennai Super Kings, scoring at a strike rate of nearly 200 in five outings in IPL 2023.

Even Rahane would have found it hard to believe if someone had told him during the Ranji Trophy season that he would feature in India's WTC final squad, more so after he was demoted in the BCCI Central Contracts. He led Mumbai and scored a couple of big hundreds - one of them against a relatively weak Assam bowling attack. His double century against Hyderabad, however, was a classy knock but with scores of 2, 51, 42, 11, 44, 14, 35, 24, and 16 in the other matches, he did not exactly set the first-class season on fire like a Mayank Agarwal or a Sarfaraz Khan. Then what changed?

Cut to IPL 2023, Rahane walks out to bat wearing the Chennai Super Kings jersey for the first time in his career in a crucial match against Mumbai Indians. He blasts 61 off just 27 balls, walks away with the Player of the Match award and never looks back. In the next two matches against RR and RCB, Rahane once again showcases a never-before-seen attacking side of his and registers scores of 31 and 37 respectively. In CSK's last match against KKR, he smashes an unbeaten 71 off just 29 balls with five towering sixes. Was it the rebirth of Rahane? It was to a certain extent, as Rahane's best strike rate in an IPL season before this was 137.

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But were five T20 innings enough to erase the dry run of close to three years in red-ball cricket for which Rahane first lost the Test vice-captaincy and then a spot in the side? It wasn't. Did the selectors mix formats? They didn't. Then how come, Rahane finds a place in India's WTC squad?

The answer is not IPL. It is a combination of Rahane's experience and injuries to first-choice cricketers.

Rishabh Pant was never going to be fit for the WTC final, it was clear a long time ago. Pant's void as a batter can be filled in Indian conditions by all-rounders like R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel but when the Indian team walks out to play the WTC final against Australia at The Oval in overcast conditions, the attacking left-hander's absence would have pinched harder than ever. Pant's replacement, KS Bharat, did little in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy to exert confidence of playing as a keeper-batter in English conditions. The solution? KL Rahul's return to the Test squad not as an opener but perhaps as the keeper-batter.

This still doesn't explain Rahane's inclusion, does it? It will, once the seriousness of Shreyas Iyer's back injury comes into the picture. He was slated to bat at No.5 but after he underwent surgery recently, there was no way he was regaining fitness before the WTC final on June 7.

With no Iyer, Pant or the extra cushion of batting as long as No.9 till Axar Patel - the chances of Ashwin, Jadeja and Axar playing together at the Oval are next to nil - the selection committee had very little option but to go back to Rahane's experience. What his decent Ranji Trophy returns at an average of 57 and IPL exploits did was prove to the selectors that the veteran of 82 Tests still has enough left in his tank to perform at the highest level. They were in search of experience and there was none better than Rahane, who is a proven customer in English conditions.

If experience was the criterion, then why not Mayank Agarwal? He had a way better Ranji season than Rahane and has international exposure too. The answer is pretty similar to why Mayank lost his place in the Test side in the first place - his shortcomings against the moving ball.

As far as going with a young Sarfaraz Khan or Suryakumar Yadav was concerned, it would have made little sense to throw a debutant in an ICC event final in front of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, and Mitchell Starc making the Dukes ball dance to their tunes. Once Sarfaraz wasn't tried in the home series against Australia, there was no way he was going to get a debut in England in the WTC final.

SKY, on the other hand, has not been in the best of forms and there is still little proof of his red-ball credentials at the highest level.

This brings us to a more relevant question, is Rahane's inclusion a short-sighted move keeping only the WTC in mind? It does appear that way but things will become really interesting if the man stands up and plays a noteworthy innings as he has done so often in his career. Till then let's get one thing straight, Rahane is in the WTC squad not because of the IPL.