Former Team India assistant coach Abhishek Nayar recently revealed that captain Rohit Sharma shared a message with him about transforming KL Rahul’s mindset as a batter after he took over the coaching role as well. Nayar, who was part of the coaching staff from the middle of 2024 to April this year, helped Rahul become a more attacking batter as well.
Despite his talent, KL Rahul often went into his shell, and that saw him become a mediocre Test batter and left a below-par effect across formats. However, with Nayar’s assistance, Rahul has turned into an aggressive batter across formats over the past few months. And, he played many crucial knocks for India in the 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy down under, where he finished as India’s third-highest run-scorer with 276 runs on challenging pitches as well.
Talking to ESPN Cricinfo, Nayar said: “When I first picked up that role, I remember I had a conversation with Rohit, and he said that one of the things he was really keen on me doing was working with KL and bringing out a more aggressive outlook to how KL played the game, and bringing the best out of him because he believed strongly that KL would play a major role in the Champions Trophy, World Cup and everything going forward including the BGT [Border-Gavaskar Trophy] and the Tests in England.”
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Abhishek Nayar also said KL Rahul’s maximum early in his innings in the 2025 Champions Trophy final against New Zealand was validation of his work as well. Coming into bat at No.6 with India needing 69 off 68 deliveries, Rahul started slow, scoring only three off his first seven balls, but played a match-winning knock later on.
“Watching the game as part of the support staff, I remember watching him and saying damn, this is really working. Because that start was very against his nature. It was not a shot that he would play when batting on [3]. That’s a shot he would play when he was batting 35 or 40. That is a small moment in my head when I said, damn, we are thinking right, he’s moving in the right direction,” said Nayar.
“There is no right time to play a shot. There is a shot, you play it. Now the backstory of the shot, no one knows. That only you and me know so let’s not expect others to understand it. No one knows the work you are putting in. No one knows the hours of planning that go into understanding why I’m going to play the shot or why I am doing this, that’s for us to understand. We have to be okay with the fact that if it doesn’t work out, people are going to criticise, people are going to ask questions, people are going to point fingers. That’s the world. It is fine,” Abhishek Nayar concluded.
