KL Rahul.
Credit: PTI Photo
Dubai: The ICC Academy ground is a dangerous place to be at when the Indian team is practicing. Balls are flying everywhere – hard and flat, loopy and parabolic. It’s as if there is a competition brewing about who can smack the little white orb the hardest, the longest. Blink, and you could be left with a souvenir for life. A broken bone, perhaps even worse.
The usual suspects are at it. Acknowledged six-hitters Rishabh Pant. Hardik Pandya. Axar Patel. Shubman Gill. Rohit Sharma, of course. And a tall, wispy, lithe figure who looks a lot like KL Rahul. Oh wait, it is KL Rahul.
Within two or three deliveries of taking guard, Rahul starts to open his broad shoulders. He keeps his shape as he lets his loose limbs take over, hitting through the line of the ball with effortless ease. He doesn’t so much as thrash the ball as time it, but it sails high into the night sky and way over the sightscreen. It’s beautiful. Breathtakingly so.
Rahul does hit sixes – everyone has to these days, right? – but not with the regularity or consistency of the ‘power-hitters’. In 84 One-Day Internationals, he only has 66 sixes to his name, which roughly translates to 0.79 sixes per game. So what’s he on about, trying to match and outdo the Pants and the Pandyas?
What Rahul is trying to do is to give himself the best chance to succeed at a position where he hasn’t batted a lot in ODIs, at No. 6. Before the tour of Sri Lanka in August last year, Rahul had batted below No. 5 exactly once in his life, in the 2019 World Cup against Australia at The Oval, and only because after the roaring start provided by Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit and Kohli, India were pushing the heavy hitters up the order – Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Pandya. Sri Lanka was seen as an aberration but ahead of the home series against England last month, India made a conscious decision to bat Axar Patel at No. 5 because they wanted their first left-hander that high up to shake up things.
Rahul had done nothing wrong to merit a demotion. In 31 innings at three-drop, he averages 56.47, his strike-rate is an excellent 96.36 – both eight points more than his overall ODI numbers. After his myriad struggles at the top of the tree, he seemed to have found his calling as a wicketkeeper-batter/finisher. But he had to trudge one slot down in the interests of the team. Rahul could have complained about being hard done by, but he isn’t that kind, not even with Pant snapping at his heels. He therefore dedicated himself to giving himself the best chance of being as successful at No. 6 as he had been one position higher.
Hence the range-hitting. Clearly, he has put a lot of thought into what his role entails. Walk into a crisis, which means the ball is still reasonably new, and he knows what to do. Walk in with a handful of overs and he needs to get cracking from the get-go. Therefore, the polishing of his six-hitting skills, with an older ball, 25 overs or more, against bowlers who took pace off. No madness, just method. Terrific method.
In the Champions Trophy, Rahul has been the consummate finisher – 41 not out against Bangladesh, 42 not out in the semis against Australia, off 34 balls when things were getting a little tense. His first six, off Adam Zampa, calmed the nerves and brought the equation down to a run a ball when Australia were stringing together a few good overs. The second, a monster off Glenn Maxwell, buried the Aussie bogey and catapulted India to the final.
Rahul has been the fall guy for so long, his tribulations in one format mixed up for inefficiency in another, which is why eyebrows were raised when Gautam Gambhir confirmed last month that Rahul was the first-choice stumper-batter in ODIs. Those raised brows are now firmly back where they should have been in the first place.