India v England Test | Rahul at home in his favoured slot

Things have started to finally fall into place for him since the Border-Gavaskar Trophy from the turn of the year.

Leeds: Having multiple skill sets, while mostly beneficial for anybody’s career, can sometimes, bizarrely, be detrimental too. Take KL Rahul for example. The gifted batter has the technique and temperament to bat anywhere in the order, and can don the wicketkeeping gloves too. Plus, he’s got a very easygoing attitude with strong work ethics.

It’s probably why various team managements have hankered with his batting positions over the last few years, playing him even as low as number six in the Test series versus South Africa in 2023-24 as well as Bangladesh and New Zealand last year. For someone who has opened the batting since age-group days, it was a culture shock, but the 33-year-old motored on for the sake of the team. Various theories have been floated on why Rahul was forced to bat so deep, but the truth is, it didn’t serve justice to his talent.     

Things, however, have started to finally fall into place for him since the Border-Gavaskar Trophy from the turn of the year. Owing to Rohit Sharma’s absence at the start of the series due to the birth of his second child, Rahul was reposted to the opening slot, and one could sense the satisfaction in his eyes. He celebrated his return to his favoured position with 26 and 77 in the opening Test in Perth before suffering a blip in what was a collective batting failure from the team.

Rahul, who has diplomatically voiced his interest in opening the innings, showed why with two well-constructed innings in the opening Test at Headingley. In the first innings, he looked on course for a big knock before a callous error ended his stay at 42, something which he’s been guilty of often in his stop-start career.

He was determined as hell in the second innings, cracking a high-quality 137 — his ninth Test century and third in England — to put India in a position of strength. There were barely any loose strokes, his 381-minute stay full of concentration and bloody-mindedness.

“In the last couple of years, I’d forgotten what my position is,” quipped Rahul at the press conference on Monday before going on to say how happy he is to be back opening. “I'm happy to be given different responsibilities and different roles. It makes the game exciting and makes me want to challenge myself and train that much harder and work on my game a little bit more. I've quite enjoyed doing that.

“The last couple of series, my role has been to open the batting and I've enjoyed doing that as well. That's something that I did growing up and for my early years as a cricketer was me opening the batting. I'm happy that I'm back doing that and I'm happy that I'm doing the job for the team.”

One of the concerns about Rahul is his inconsistency. He generally starts series well but is unable to build on the momentum, one of the reasons why his average is just 33.57 in 58 Tests in a decade-long career. The Bengalurean said his goal now is to make big runs this series where Rishabh Pant and he are the two senior-most batters in a transitioning young team.

“It’s always disappointing for a batter when you get starts and don’t get a big score for the team. Obviously, I was happy with the way I was batting in Australia but very disappointed at the end of the series that I couldn't convert those starts. I had opportunities in every game, I got starts in every game and in an ideal world, I would have wanted to convert all of those innings into big knocks.

“But unfortunately, I couldn't do that and that's how the game goes sometimes. Sometimes you get a good ball, sometimes you play a bad shot. It's part of the game. You learn from the mistakes and that's something that I learned from that series just to make sure that once I get a start, I try and make it count and try and score as many runs as I can.”

If Rahul can do that consistently, it’ll serve him and the India team very well.