Former players Shaun Pollock and Dinesh Karthik have opened up on the stand-in captain KL Rahul’s leadership skills in the second India vs South Africa Test. Notably, Rahul has been leading the team in the absence of Virat Kohli.
Pollock told Cricbuzz: “I think he’s been good. He’s had a few challenges, hasn’t he? I mean Siraj getting injured, that’s never easy as a captain when one of your lead bowlers goes missing in action… He would have been scratching his head a little bit after the first session today. The bowlers were brilliant… but as a captain you do feel when you don’t pick wickets, ‘What more am I supposed to do? … Do I have to think out of the box?’ And I don’t think he did and eventually, he got the reward just before Lunch.”
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However, Pollock also liked the way KL Rahul used Ravichandran Ashwin and Shardul Thakur, who bowled a stunning spell of 7/61. He said that Rahul has “ticked a lot of boxes”, adding that it will be interesting to see how he manages the final innings of the Test as well.
Pollock said: “The way he used Ashwin was OK, he got him to look in and see if there was any assistance. You never know what goes behind the scenes but obviously, some conversations with Shardul Thakur were important and he got him to believe, kept him going… So I would say he’s ticked a lot of boxes, no problems there whatsoever. It’s going to be interesting next time around. Can he manage his troops to victory, no matter what score they get?”
Meanwhile, Dinesh Karthik also said that Rahul’s good batting form has helped his captaincy. Karthik also applauded his bowling changes.
Karthik said: “I think he’s handled it well. Obviously, he’s in good batting form which helps. Just the moves that he made… his thought process was right… He’s always looked like a calm and composed captain. He’s a pretty emotional character per se but it never comes out in the field.”
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He concluded: “As soon as you get your head away it’s hard to see the ball and because you have a glove there which obviously has a lot of leather in it … what it does is the impact on the ground is not seen so you are not sure if it has come into the gloves or just bounced off the ground and this happens a lot… And in spite of all the HD technology and everything it’s really hard (to judge) so we have to, as a thumb rule, go with what the fielder says and on top of that we have two umpires there [so] trust them…”
