It’s still not clear whether KL Rahul will open in the Adelaide Test. “I know but I have been told to not tell,” he would tell the media. But it’s certain that he is going to get a tattoo at the end of the tour. “I have already fixed it after Sydney”. He knows what design he wants, doesn’t want to share yet, and it is becoming a bit of tradition. “I had done a tattoo on my first tour, and again (my) second tour.”
That first Australian tattoo was 10 years ago. “Feels like 25, honestly,” Rahul says with a smile. Sometimes years can flash by in a blur, especially in good times, but Rahul’s career has seen so many ups-and-downs. It has been a journey where he has felt every stumble deeply. “With the amount of injuries I’ve had, time away from the sport, yeah, feels long.”
And lots of trolling and criticism. For someone who has played over 50 Tests, hit 6 of his 8 hundreds outside Asia and is a captain in IPL, he hasn’t received unequivocal love from the public or consistent trust from the different team managements over the years. He doesn’t even have a regular spot in the team.
A floater in the line-up, who has drifted here and there through his career. It couldn’t have been easy. His most famous celebration has been him closing his ears with his fingers to suggest he is cutting out “external noise”. And the din has been pretty loud about nearly every facet of his game: his strike rate in white-ball cricket, his batting foibles in Test cricket, his wicketkeeping. Even when he is a near mute-witness with Hardik Pandya on Koffee with Karan, his name has been dragged through the mud.
‘Grateful for everything’
“I learned a lot in these 10 years and really grateful for everything that I’ve had to go through, the ups and downs, the good, the bad, everything. Australia is where it started for me 10 years ago and hopefully, this is a start for something great in the next half of my career.”
India’s Yashasvi Jaiswal, left, and teammate KL Rahul leave the field at the end of play on the second day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)
It does seem so, but it’s difficult to confidently tell that with KL for such has been the stormy past. One can’t think of many batsmen who have hundreds in South Africa, England, Australia and still not get a befitting stature. Or adequate respect, if not love from the fans. But this series has certainly started promisingly with his knocks in Perth in both innings, and in particular how he mentored Yashasvi Jaiswal through a nervy phase in the second innings.
Jaiswal had publicly spoken about the help he received from Rahul – how he was told to breathe deeply to calm himself down, and little suggestions through that phase. On Wednesday, Rahul would say all he did then was to pass on the same suggestions his opening partner M Vijay had given him all those years back.
“I could see a bit of myself in Jaiswal from when I was here 10 years ago, opening the batting for the first time. A lot of doubts, a lot of nerves. You keep doubting your own game and there’s a lot that happens in your head. So the only thing that you can do is to slow things down, try and take a few deep breaths and focus on one thing. And that’s what was passed on to me by my fellow opening partner back then, Murali Vijay. So I just passed that on to him. Once he got past those first 30-40 balls, he started to feel a little bit more confident and he was seeing the ball really well and he batted beautifully.”
Rahul admitted that he still faces those self-doubts and nerves. “I do still have all of these thoughts. But having been there, you know what you need to do to get past that or get over those doubts and get over those thoughts you have in your head. So whatever I told Jaiswal is what I practice.”
Balance in stance
In the knocks thus far, his bat has been held closer to the body, one of the faults in the past that had led to him being dropped from the team. He had had a problem against the incoming ball, as the bat would be held a touch away, and would leave a bat-and-pad gap. He worked a lot on it with his friend David Mathais, a former Ranji teammate and a close friend.
“It comes from good hard work on balance in the stance. The alignment at the crease,” Mathias said. “That balance is the key for Rahul. He doesn’t commit to any one shot. He is in a very neutral but strong position. The flaws against incoming balls disappeared, his judgement of the off stump became good and since he loves batting so much and faced failure, his patience has improved. He now preys on the bowlers’ patience. The whole game reversed, basically. He is tremendously strong mentally. Once the technique thing kicked in – as in felt comfortable with the head position and the bat flow, that was it. The rest he sorted out mentally.”
The way he guided Jaiswal said a lot about his confidence in his own game. That he could see beyond himself, despite being pressed as an opener only because Rohit Sharma couldn’t make the tour in time, spoke volumes of the space he is in. If it continues for the rest of the Tests, Australia, the place where it started for him, might yet provide him not just his newest tattoo but the impetus to stop his old celebration. He can then take the fingers off his ears, and hear some love pouring in.
I’m Manas Ranjan Sahoo: Founder of “Webtirety Software”. I’m a Full-time Software Professional and an aspiring entrepreneur, dedicated to growing this platform as large as possible. I love to Write Blogs on Software, Mobile applications, Web Technology, eCommerce, SEO, and about My experience with Life.
