Was keeping Yastika Bhatia really the obvious call?

Gujarat Giants keeping Yastika Bhatia is being treated as the easiest decision of their retention window, a top-order batter in form whose place was never up for debate. Her recent innings back the retention. Our ratings are cooler on it: they put her 44th of 50 among women's T20 batters, worth about 2 runs a match more than an average player, and the gap between her form and her rating is where the obvious call gets interesting.

Starts in England, a fifty for the Knight Riders

The run that earned the coach's faith began against England, where Bhatia made 54 off 40 balls on 28 May and followed it with two more starts in the next two matches. June was leaner, with three innings against Netherlands, South Africa and Bangladesh, the best of them 23 off 18, before she went unused with the bat against Australia. September with Trinbago Knight Riders brought 35 off 28 balls against Barbados Tridents, then an unbeaten 57 off 34 against Jamaica Empress, as high as she has scored in a T20, and 6 off 9 against Guyana Amazon Warriors.

What is missing is the big one. In 66 T20s since 2021 her highest score is that 57 not out, with four fifties and no hundred.

Where our ratings put her

That 44th place of 50 is the profile of a batter who makes a side a little better most weeks, and it sits oddly with the idea that there was nothing to weigh up. The innings tell the same story. Since May she has made 54 and an unbeaten 57, with three more scores in the thirties between them, which is the output of a batter who keeps an innings moving rather than one who takes a match away from the opposition. Better than most of the batters around her, then, and some way short of a player a franchise cannot do without.

Fulmali, and the verdict

Bharti Fulmali is a different kind of call. The coach expects her to grow into the finisher's role, which is a judgement about what she might become, and the matches ahead are the only place it can be tested.

Bhatia's case is easier to settle. Keeping her was right. Calling it obvious oversells a player our ratings place in the lower reaches of the top 50. The label fits once she carries a start for the Giants through to the score that wins a match, and her first innings of the new season will show whether that is coming.