Vikram Rathour, the batting coach of India, has made it clear that despite the fact that KL Rahul has had a couple of failures in the first two games of the ongoing T20 World Cup, the team management is fully backing the opener as he is a vital part of India’s batting line-up.
KL Rahul looked very tentative against Pakistan on a difficult Melbourne surface and then he failed to cash in against the Netherlands as well. Rahul had struggled for a bit of batting rhythm in the Asia Cup after coming back from surgery, but coming into the World Cup, he had managed to find his form with three half-centuries in the bilateral T20I series against Australia and South Africa.
Even after landing in Australia, Rahul had scored a couple of half-centuries in the practice games that India played against Western Australia XI and then the Australian national team, before the super 12 round of the T209 World Cup started.
India had high hopes for KL Rahul before the start of the T20 World Cup
Ahead of their first super 12 games against Pakistan, India had high hopes for KL Rahul which he didn’t live up to, but while addressing the press conference ahead of an important game against South Africa, Vikram Rathour said that two games are very small sample size to judge any batsman and two low scores can happen to anyone in T20 cricket.
Vikram Rathour: "We will back KL Rahul and he's a class player. He is an important member of the team. I am sure one day KL Rahul will turn aggressor for us when he's hitting right off the middle." #INDvSA #TeamIndia pic.twitter.com/Z7NstBDo6t
— Kunal Yadav (@kunaalyaadav) October 29, 2022
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Talking about the nature of the surface in Perth, Rathour said that the pitches have been difficult to bat on in Australia and the Melbourne pitch was a very difficult pitch as well. The Indian batsmen have been trying to make the necessary adjustments, but these pitches don’t seem to be the ones where 200 runs can be scored easily.
All the T20 World Cup matches in Perth, so far, have turned out to be low scoring ones and no team has been able to cross the mark of 160 while batting first.
