Competitive pragmatism, a hybrid concept most commonly applied in the business and corporate world, refers to a realistic and result-oriented approach - something Gautam Gambhir and Shubman Gill could do well to adopt and endorse in the context of the Indian ODI team, and particularly with regard to KL Rahul's batting position.

Rarely does Rahul get to bat in his preferred No 5 position these days, with the team management often making extraneous considerations such as left-right combinations and extended batting depth, sacrificing quality in pursuit of an imaginative balance.

In reality, Rahul complements the top order when it is firing, and rallies around the lower order and tailenders to steer the side to a respectable total when there is a top-order collapse, like the one seen at the Niranjan Shah Stadium in Rajkot against New Zealand on Wednesday.

Batting at No 5, Rahul hammered an unbeaten century (112*) in a difficult situation and under tricky conditions. That it did not help India win is a separate issue, but the total of 284 for 7 could have been considerably lower had it not been for his effort while batting first.

The arid appearance of the Rajkot pitch was misleading, as there was more life beneath the surface than initially thought. It led to a rare joint failure of Ro-Ko (Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli), and after the exits of Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer, Rahul batted with circumspection, application and discipline, holding the proverbial centre together even as India kept losing wickets around him.

It was an innings of pure quality, timed to perfection, with the acceleration coming at just the right moment. His 112 - the eighth century of his 93-match ODI career - took India to a total that looked good enough for the bowlers to defend. That they could not is a matter of concern for the team management.

"We probably want to bowl a little bit better than we did tonight. But it's never just one reason for losing a game. There's a lot of different things going into that loss tonight. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the combinations we have played in the past, we do like the extra spinner," Ryan ten Doeschate, team's assistant coach, said while conceding that India missed an extra spinner.

Returning to Rahul, in recent times Axar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja have been preferred to him at the No 5 position, though whether that has worked well for India remains a matter of interpretation. During the Champions Trophy early last year, Rahul batted at No. 6 and the team won all its matches - a successful experiment that justified the team management's call.

But those were largely low-scoring contests, with sub-300 totals. In an era when teams routinely speak of 350-plus scores, a specialist at No. 5 could provide greater heft to the batting order than an all-rounder. When Rahul has batted in his preferred position, he has delivered more often than he has failed. The match-winning 97 against Australia in the 2023 World Cup league fixture came at No. 5, as did his 66 in the World Cup final - albeit in a losing cause. Incidentally, both innings were the highest scores for the side in those matches.

This is where competitive pragmatism comes into play, and Gambhir and Gill may need to abandon experiments and so-called theoretical balance in favour of a more robust approach - opting for a specialist at No. 5 rather than an all-rounder. While batting second, Rahul times a chase to near perfection, adopting a largely low-risk approach.

"He's definitely good enough to bat at five. And it sort of gives us a bit of breathing space in terms of tactically where we want to play the all-rounders. If we feel like we need to inject a bit of impetus into the innings, you can try someone, be it a Washi (Washington Sundar) or a Hardik (Pandya), whoever comes in, can bat at five. But we certainly don't have any doubts or question marks over KL's ability to be a No 5 in ODI cricket," ten Doeschate said.

He further explained the point, lauding Rahul's century. "That's a quality hundred there today. And also the toll that keeping takes on guys in 50-over cricket isn't that bad. So it's not like we're protecting him. I guess one of our strategies in the last 18 months has been to prolong that batting order. And we do like to use the all-rounder either high up the order or at number five like we've done in the past. But that certainly is an avenue to explore. With KL finding the form that he's in now, he can be a regular number five and you play all-rounders."

The batting order is a relatively minor issue compared to the larger menace of trolling that Rahul has faced on various occasions. Social media has often been nasty towards him, and more pertinently, even experts such as Venkatesh Prasad have not spared him from criticism.

Although Prasad's criticism was directed at Rahul's batting in other formats, such virulence could have demoralised other players. "I have a lot of regard for KL Rahul's talent and ability, but sadly his performances have been well below par," Venkatesh Prasad, currently the president of the Karnataka State Cricket Association, had once said about Rahul's Test batting. Rahul not only survived the criticism but has also emerged stronger.

He has held India's batting together in ODIs wherever he has batted, and since 2025 he has averaged 52.42, scoring 367 runs in 11 innings at an impressive strike rate of over 107. Over the last 12 months, his scores read: 2, 10, 40, 41*, DNB, 23, 42*, 34*, 38, 11, DNB, 60, 66*, DNB, 29* and 112*, with very few failures.

"I thought he played really well, I thought he balanced the innings and the way he soaked up some pressure and then got a score for them at the end, I thought he played really well," said Daryl Mitchell, the centurion for New Zealand and the POTM, on Rahul's knock.