Former Australian pacer Brett Lee has shown his concerns about Lucknow Super Giants captain KL Rahul’s strike rate in IPL 2024, saying it puts too much pressure on other batters as well. He observed how the Kolkata Knight Riders’ top-order batters are performing well. KL Rahul, who has won the Orange cap in IPL multiple times, has a career strike rate of 135.04 and has maintained a strike rate of 141.03 in the ongoing edition but he could manage only 25 off 21 deliveries against the Kolkata Knight Riders on Sunday.

Speaking on JioCinema, Lee said: “I think if you look at both opening batters from both sides, it’s a complete contrast. KKR have got it right. They’re out of the blocks quickly, they’re scoring runs. And then you got KL Rahul on the other side, that’s, you know, getting a run a ball and putting a lot of pressure on the back end.”

“You know, we saw four games and I picked KL Rahul here, the first four games he played. His strike rate was 129, then he went to 150 and now he’s come back and said, ‘well, yeah, you know the bowlers have done a great job. I think there’s a lot of pressure on him because he hasn’t scored the runs he should be,” Lee further added.

While chasing a daunting 236, LSG were nowhere in the game as Harshit Rana and Varun Chakravarthy shared six wickets between
them to bundle out for 137 as well.

“It was a lot of runs to be scored in the second innings. When you are chasing a big total, you are trying to go too hard and you end up losing wickets. Just a poor performance overall. We didn’t (hit our lengths on a consistent basis), just been a poor performance overall with bat, ball and in the field. Sunil Narine and Phil Salt, in the powerplay, we’ve seen how they bat and they do put a lot of pressure on the opposition. Our young bowlers couldn’t handle that kind of pressure and he hit some really good shots,” KL Rahul said.