Ghosts of finals past: When Rahul's what-if met Mitchell's unfinished business

Shubman Gill out pulling. Rohit Sharma slicing high over the off side. Virat Kohli bowled off the inside edge, looking to dab down to third. All this with India batting first on a slower-than-expected pitch in the state of Gujarat.

Why did all this feel so familiar?

This ODI series between India and New Zealand is awkwardly situated, taking place just over a month from the start of a T20 World Cup. The 50-overs format is seemingly on no one else's mind, but sometimes, a contest creates its own context.

When Kohli fell on Wednesday in Rajkot, social media was abuzz with all the parallels to November 19, 2023, but you would have assumed the professionals playing this game were only thinking about the here and now.

Or were they?

Because in the middle of Rajkot, watching from the other end as Kohli played on, was the guy who had watched the same thing happen - from the same vantage point - in Ahmedabad on that fateful day. A reflective sort of character, who had no doubt replayed that day, and his role in it, many times in his head.

This guy, KL Rahul, brought up his 107-ball 66 in the 2023 World Cup final unprompted in a YouTube chat with long-time India team-mate R Ashwin. All Ashwin asked of Rahul was to speak of one decision in his life - even from outside cricket, if he so wished - that he'd change, given the chance to do so.

Rahul could have gone anywhere, and he went there, to that innings, to the state of mind he was in when he edged Mitchell Starc behind.

"I was just stuck in between - whether to attack or just play him [out] and then take a chance on the other side - and in that confusion, ended up nicking the ball and getting out at a crucial time. I felt like if I had continued that innings and gone on to play the rest of the [innings], we could have probably gotten at least 30-40 runs more and we could have probably had a World Cup in our hands, but yeah, that's something that I'll regret."

Nothing Rahul could do in Rajkot would change the smallest thing about Ahmedabad. All he could do, like the rest of us in our quotidian lives, was try to be the best possible version of himself on the day.

You could argue that Rahul wasn't this on November 19. That the size of the occasion made him so risk-averse that he didn't just hit only one boundary in 107 balls, but barely attempted another. That this man blessed with so many ways of putting bowlers under pressure simply allowed Australia's attack to keep bowling the lines and lengths as they wished.

There were mitigating circumstances: The conditions. The excellence of Australia's attack. Their meticulous planning and execution. The fatal lack of depth in India's line-up, which made risk-taking that much riskier. The timing of the wickets India lost. The counterfactual of what could have happened had Rahul batted through the innings.

He didn't, of course. Not on that day.

But here in Rajkot, he got the chance to play out the counterfactual. Not against the same team, not in a match of similar significance, but you can only play the situation that's in front of you.

And Rahul played this one as well as anyone could have. That he made an unbeaten 112 off 92 balls when his batting partners (and extras) combined for 57 off 79 spoke of two things: of how well he played. And the problems of India's lower middle order. Rather than Axar Patel and Hardik Pandya - their first-choice allrounders - India had in this game a Ravindra Jadeja, with severe limitations against spin in white-ball cricket, and an inexperienced Nitish Kumar Reddy. Between them, Jadeja and Reddy hit one four and one six in 65 balls.

Rahul, then, carried more of the run-scoring burden than he might ordinarily have been. He took it on in a way that's now familiar, soaking up pressure when required, shifting it onto the bowling side when required. He attacked the spinners judiciously, hitting just three fours off them but scoring 42 off 46, and the methods that brought those three fours - two forays out of the crease, one reverse-sweep - were of the kind that pressures bowlers to change their lengths or change their fields.

Against pace, particularly through the death overs, he was severe: 70 off 46 balls, and some extraordinary shots, particularly over the covers and mid-off. Two of them - one each off Zak Foulkes and Kyle Jamieson - stood out for his ability to pick the slower ball early and hold his shape for an extra split-second, to be able to meet the ball with a perfectly timed bat-swing.

Shots of immense poise in an innings of immense poise. This was the counterfactual: the what-if, the if-only.

But sometimes, the counterfactual only shows you other possible ways of losing.

On this day, Rahul's innings came up against another middle-order masterclass, another counterfactual by another batter carrying deep battle scars. If Rahul can't help revisiting that 107-ball 66, Daryl Mitchell probably keeps reflecting on his 101-ball 63 in last year's Champions Trophy final.

Mitchell was a key player for New Zealand in that game, a man with two previous hundreds against India, and a proven disruptor of their spinners, possessing a wide range of sweeps on both sides of the wicket as well as the ability to step out and loft down the ground. Most good players of spin master one of these two modes of attack; Mitchell, unusually, possesses both.

And yet, Mitchell struggled to get to grips with India's spin quartet, scoring just 52 off 96 balls against them, and hitting just the one four.

Rajkot wasn't nearly as reminiscent of Dubai 2025 for Mitchell as it was of Ahmedabad 2023 for Rahul. For one, New Zealand were chasing here. But as in Dubai, they needed someone to take charge quickly and transfer pressure back onto India. Chasing 285, New Zealand were 46 for 2 in the 13th over, and their required rate was nearing 6.5, on a pitch where the seamers were getting the ball to hold and keep a little low.

Into this situation, Mitchell brought an immediate, icy clarity. The fifth ball he faced was a half-volley from India's sixth bowler: Reddy. But the shot he played - a straight-bat punch over the long-on boundary - rang off his bat like a warning. I'm here, and I'm coming for you.

Mitchell vs India's spinners was always going to be the defining contest, and he imposed himself on both Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav at the earliest opportunity. He swept the third ball he faced from Jadeja hard and firm, into the big gap to the left of short fine leg. He stepped out to the second ball he faced from Kuldeep and muscled him over the midwicket boundary. And he kept the wristspinner under the pump, shuffling across to lap-scoop his next ball to the fine leg boundary.

Kuldeep endured one of his toughest nights in ODIs, not just going for runs but also losing his command of length, too often dropping short or offering width. Errors of that kind don't just happen with a bowler of his quality; they are forced. Mitchell did much of the forcing: stepping out, sweeping, reverse-sweeping, paddling, never letting the bowler settle. In all, he scored 50 off Kuldeep in just 32 balls.

And in doing this, Mitchell extended his counterfactual further back, from Dubai 2025 to Dharamsala 2023. There, in one of the World Cup's most fascinating league-stage battles, Mitchell had gone after Kuldeep with ferocious intent, leaving him with figures of 4-0-48-0 at one stage. But Kuldeep had found a way back into the game, taking two wickets and conceding just 25 in his last five. At the same time, a tiring Mitchell had slowed down, scoring just 30 off 27 after reaching a run-a-ball century.

All that had contributed to New Zealand setting a target that India were able to hunt down with two overs to spare.

Here, Mitchell wasn't to be denied. Kuldeep forced one chance out of him - a wrong'un miscued high down the ground - but Prasidh Krishna put him down at long-on, and that was that. This was a tough evening for India's bowlers, on a pitch that got better and better to bat on under lights, and Mitchell was too good a batter, and batting too well, to not finish the job having enjoyed that reprieve.

He had come into this game with an incredible record against India, averaging 52.55 with two fifties and two hundreds in 11 matches, but all four of those innings had come in defeat. Here, finally, a brilliant hundred in a thumping win.

This could have been Rahul's match, and in some ways it was, notwithstanding the result. It certainly was Mitchell's match, at long last. Counterfactual met counterfactual in Rajkot, and only one could win on the day.