Rinku paid the price for Impact Player rule?

The Impact Player rule which has made IPL contests quite literally a ldquo12aside affairrdquo has dealt a raw deal to powerhitter Rinku Singh who couldnrsquot make the Indian main squad for T20 World Cup as he simply did not have enough game time to his creditThe 26yearold Aligarh lefthander who captured the cricketing worldrsquos imagination with five sixes in an over during the previous IPL made way for Shivam Dube in the main national squad while his name ended up being among the reserves Dube got in thanks to more game time for Chennai Super Kings CSK during the first 10 games of the leagueThose who were privy to the selection meeting held in Ahmedabad on Tuesday unanimously agreed that Rinku became an easy omission for the panel because he couldnrsquot be fitted alongside Hardik Pandya and Dube in the same 15lsquoRisky to drop HardikrsquoldquoNo doubt Rinku paid the price for the Impact Player rule He is plain and simple unlucky Hardik might be in poor form but he is still Indiarsquos best seam bowling allrounder and it would have been a risk dropping him considering he is the only one who has bowledrdquo a BCCI source saidSo how did the Impact Player Rule become Rinkursquos undoingKolkata Knight Riders KKR treated Rinku as a finisher and he never got a chance to bat in the top five In eight innings before selection he played merely 82 balls which is just about 10 balls per inningsThe two IyersmdashVenkatesh and skipper Shreyasmdashalong with Angkrish Raghuvanshi who is anything but a powerhitter got a majority of the overs leaving Rinku with very little to do in the endAlso ReadWait for the knives to be outOne canrsquot blame KKR for not promoting Rinku but truth be told the two Iyers were never in contention for national selection Their names werenrsquot even up for discussionIn contrast CSK and their shrewd tactician Mahendra Singh Dhoni have been making optimum use of Dube ever since he came in during the 2021 seasonDube has got to play 203 balls in nine games so far for CSK Thatrsquos around 23 balls per gamemdash13 more than Rinku which enabled him to muscle 26 sixes apart from 24 foursRinku in his 82 balls hit nine fours and six sixesLack of batting timeThe 13 extra balls that Dube as Impact Player got made all the difference especially on flatter decks where one could hit through the line Rinku didnrsquot even get his fair share of batting on tracks where Raghuvanshi and the Iyers consumed more deliveriesDube hasnrsquot been bowling his medium pacers as Dhoni has rightly judged that his bowling ability is below par and on most days he will be a stationary target for batters keen on range hittingIf there wasnrsquot an Impact Player rule it is not clear if Dhoni and current CSK captain Ruturaj Gaikwad would have been able to use Dube in his current avatar69No of runs scored by Rinku Singh in his last T20I innings against Afghanistan at a strike rate of 1769217623 Rinkursquos strike rate in T20Is He has scored 356 in 11 innings at an impressive average of 8900This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever