India’s head coach Rahul Dravid has confirmed that they will continue to back KL Rahul despite his poor returns in the recent past. Rahul was dismissed after scoring only 20 runs in the opening Test match against Australia at Nagpur and he returned with scores of 17 and 1 in the second Test match against the visitors.
Rahul didn’t have the rub of the green on his side in the second dig as the ball ricocheted off Peter Handscomb’s knee and ballooned to Alex Carey for a simple catch.
Rahul has scored 2642 runs in 47 Test matches at a below-average of 33.44. However, Dravid said the opener has got the tough runs in SENA countries and deserves the backing of the team management.
In fact, a lot of cricket boffins want KL Rahul to be removed from the final XI with an in-form Shubman Gill waiting in the wings.
Rahul Dravid said while talking to Star Sports, “I think he needs to trust his processes. This is just a phase, he has been one of our most successful overseas openers. He’s got hundreds in South Africa and England, we’ll continue to back him. I believe he has the quality and class to come out of this. It is great working with this unit, managing formats is the most difficult part. But there’s not a lot of technical coaching, just simple conversations and challenging them, and giving them a pat on the back when they do well.”
Meanwhile, India took nine wickets in the opening session of the third day’s play to wrap up Australia’s innings at 113. Dravid revealed that the plan was to bowl an accurate line and length in the first session of play.
He added, “I think it was about sticking to a length and letting the wicket do it for us. I felt yesterday we overpitched too much, and honestly, we learnt from what Australia and Nathan Lyon did. I think the balance that we have is brilliant, there’s great depth to be able to play 9 batters. (On Virat Kohli) I thought the judgment of length was really good, there was a sense of calm when he was playing which is a great sign. These are tricky wickets, you can’t play the perfect innings and you need a bit of luck to go your way.”
India has taken an impregnable lead of 2-0 in the series and they have also retained the Border-Gavaskar trophy. The third Test match of the series will be played at Indore from March 1.
