Manchester: KL Rahul is ‘disappointed’ at not being able to convert his starts but not at all ‘worried’ as he believes that he is doing a lot of things right.
Rahul had scores of 26, 11 not out, 57, 30 and 48 in five completed games and barring the one against Australia where he came in at the fag end of the innings, he has got out after getting set.
“It’s a bit disappointing,” the talented Karnataka batsman said after the game against the West Indies. He accepted that he should have gone on to score a few more runs.
“I am doing the hard work in getting through the first 10 or 15 overs, or as an opening batsmen, scoring the first 25, 30 runs, which is the hardest. But then getting out when the time comes to accelerate and may be take the game deeper has been a bit disappointing. The starts should have been converted to something more substantial,” Rahul lamented
“But again I can sit, I will sit and assess, but it won’t worry me that much because there are a lot of things I’m doing right, and I know that the mistakes I’ve made I can learn from them and get better,” Rahul pointed out.
Rahul got out playing a reverse sweep to off-spinner Mohammed Nabi against Afganistan and versus West Indies, it was a pitched up delivery from Jason Holder that brought about his downfall.
“Against Afghanistan, I would not say it (reverse sweep) was a bad shot. It was a shot I play all the time. And more often than not I hit it for four. But unfortunately, I did not execute it well,” Rahul said. “But the planning and the timing of that shot may be was questionable because I needed to stitch up a partnership with Virat,” admitted the batsman.
“And today (against Windies), as a batsman, it disappoints you but then again you know bowlers are allowed to bowl good balls. And you do make mistakes. And I can’t sit back and break my head about it. I just go on and try to start fresh in Birmingham and try to get a big one,” Rahul said.
Rahul stated that he is always ‘ready’ to juggle up and down the order, and Shikhar Dhawan’s untimely injury did not change much for him.
“I know that Shikhar getting injured was unfortunate. And I had to go to the top of the order. However, it’s not that I never prepared for opening the batting. In my head, the last one or two years I have been preparing for whatever might be my role,” the 27-year-old right-handed batsman said.
On India’s not so impressive batting show in the past two games, Rahul said that both wickets weren’t easy for scoring runs. In fact, he revealed that when he and Rohit Sharma were batting, they had sent a message to the dressing room that the wicket was two paced and 260 was a par-score.
PTI