CHENNAI: KL Rahul, the Test cricketer, can be hard to make sense of. As much as it is the same in the other two formats of the game, in Tests, Rahul is an anomaly for Indian cricket.

It is no exaggeration. A Test average of 33.87 after 53 matches, which does rounds on social media every time he fails, is unheard of for an Indian specialist batter. To put it into context, among players with 50 or more Test caps, Ravindra Jadeja has a better average than Rahul (35.16). In fact, apart from Kapil Dev (31.05), Syed Kirmani (27.04) and R Ashwin (25.92) who follow Rahul on the list, everyone beneath him have been picked for one specific skill set (bowling). Any other cricketer with such numbers would be nowhere near the national set-up.

Rahul, however, is not any other cricketer. He is special. Right from the time he broke into the Indian team in 2014 and scored a Test hundred in Sydney, it has been the case. Since then, India has had six captains, including Rahul himself, six coaching tenures (five coaches with Ravi Shastri donning the hat twice) and multiple selection committees. Through all this, no matter who’s captain or the coach or chief selector, one thing has remained constant — his place in the side, if fit.