Delhi: There are not many such occasions when a player creates such an atmosphere with his performance that every cricket lover wants to see that player playing Test for Team India. That’s why everyone is advocating to see Dhruv Jurel’s name in the team for the first Test against South Africa. The need of Team India itself is also helping them.

Dhruv Jurel’s great form

Dhruv Jurel’s scores in the current domestic season 2025-26 are 140, 1 and 56, 125, 44 and 6.and 132 And there are 127*. This also included two 100s in the red ball match against South Africa A. He has three 100s to his name in his last 8 first class innings including one Test 100. It is difficult to ignore such a record. After these scores, Jurel has posed a very difficult question to coach Gautam Gambhir. While on one hand it is a good news that fit Rishabh Pant is again handling the wicket-keeping duties and strengthening the team’s batting, on the other hand, the question is that how can we ignore the cricket played by Dhruv Jurel in his place and who is a contender for a place in the team?

Rishabh Pant’s place fixed

So far, in the absence of Rishabh Pant, he has played 7 Tests (record: 430 runs at 47+ average with one 100), out of which he has been given wicketkeeper duty in the last three Tests of India (against England at the Oval and against West Indies in Ahmedabad and Delhi) but played in such a way that now the issue of his playing as a specialist batsman is in discussion. Batted at numbers 5-8 in all these 11 innings. Now only Pant will bat in the lower middle order. Therefore, the focus goes straight to number 3, for which Gautam Gambhir is continuously ‘preparing’ Sai Sudarshan. Therefore, if Jurel has to be played then either Sai or all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy will have to sit out. With Nitish not playing, there will be one less bowler and the team management has to decide whether they are ready to tinker with the team structure keeping in mind that they are playing Tests in India?

Will there be two wicketkeepers in the playing eleven?

In Test cricket, there are many examples of two wicketkeepers being named in the playing eleven, but the Indian selectors have not been seen believing in this experiment in recent years. India last included two specialist wicketkeepers in the playing eleven in 1986 and Kiran More and Chandrakant Pandit were the wicketkeepers then. Pandit played as a specialist batsman.

Dhruv Jurel had come to the Test team in place of Rishabh Pant and played in such a way that he not only did not become a challenge for Pant, he himself became a contender for a place in the playing eleven on the basis of his talent. He is a batsman-wicketkeeper like Pant and is batting with better technique. The match-winning 90 runs in the first innings of the Ranchi Test against England is a very good proof of this.

By the way, remember that Indian selectors are very famous for not giving importance to such emotion-driven viewpoints. Similarly, Sarfaraz Khan was also a contender to play Test and how impressed were the selectors with his record?