The Indian batting coach, Vikram Rathour reckons that three cheap dismissals can’t change the fact that KL Rahul is India’s “best T20 batsman” and he should be supported during this rough phase. Virat Kohli’s sentiments after the team’s eight-wicket defeat against England on Tuesday. Rahul has had scores of 1,0 and 0 and one of the major reasons behind it is him not having enough match practice e played his last competitive match during the T20 series in Australia in December last year.
Describing the same during the post-match press conference, Vikram Rathour said, “Anybody can have a lean phase and KL has been our best batsman in the T20 format. 3 failures don’t change the fact that he is the best batsman we have in this format. This is the time when we need to support him and I am absolutely sure he will come back out of the lean phase.”
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However, Rathour did agree that Rahul is looking rusty in the middle and all it would take is one good shot to get back into the groove.
Vikram Rathour explained, “I agree they do tend to get rusty when they are sitting out but the only thing we can do is to provide them practice. They are having a lot of net sessions and even on the middle (center strips). That’s all they can do and we can just hope that one innings or one shot and they will be back in form. People like KL Rahul.”
India has now lost two T20Is batting first and according to the former Test opener, the pitches on offer during the first three games of the five-match series have been tricky.
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Rathour explained, “It is a difficult surface to assess what will be a good score and the bounce makes it tricky when you start batting. The ball stops and we saw some variable bounce. So you can’t assess how many runs will be a good score. Every game we have played on different surfaces and as a team it is tough. We have had 3 games now and next game hopefully we can do better if we bat first.”
