What Angkrish Raghuvanshi's first hundred says about Mumbai's top order

Angkrish Raghuvanshi's 114 for Mumbai in the Ranji Trophy is being praised as a carefully built innings and as the first hundred of his professional career. The second half of that praise matters most, because in 51 innings in men's T20 cricket since October 2023, for Kolkata Knight Riders and in Mumbai, his highest score is 82 not out.

He needed a door to open first. Mumbai reshaped their Ranji top order with Yashasvi Jaiswal and Mhatre absent, and Raghuvanshi was one of two batters brought into the squad alongside Suryansh Shedge. He took a place someone else had left empty, then stayed at the crease long enough to build the kind of innings the IPL has never asked of him.

What his T20 record says about Raghuvanshi

Over the last two years in men's T20 cricket he has averaged 33.1, against 24.0 for top-seven batters, which reads like a good record. Our IPL batting ratings are less kind, placing him 123rd of 147 and worth barely more than an average player, about 0.06 runs a match. His last IPL season shows why. A string of low scores in April was followed by three fifties in May, a run of form that looked like a man carrying all the shopping in one trip and dropping half of it on the stairs. The good innings and the bad ones arrived in separate clumps, with very little steady scoring in between.

Should Mumbai keep Raghuvanshi when Mhatre returns?

This month's headlines still dwell on his IPL auction price, as if a bidding room had already settled what he is worth. Yet a T20 record cannot show whether a batter can keep going through sessions after a start, and that is exactly what the Ranji Trophy asks of an opener.

That makes any comparison with Mumbai's young openers of the past premature. One hundred is a single innings set against a white-ball record built on quick starts, and it came in a top order Mumbai had to rebuild around two absences. The selection question is more urgent. When Mhatre is available again, Mumbai should keep Raghuvanshi at the top of the order and stop treating him as cover for the next absence.

A batter who has just shown he can stay in deserves a run of matches in which he is expected to do it again.