IND vs BAN, 1st Test: Ex-India cricketer Sanjay Majrekar has slammed KL Rahul for his shambolic batting performance on the first day of the series opener against Bangladesh at Chepauk stadium on Thursday. It should be noted here that Rahul came into bat when the Men in Blue were struggling at 96/4 and got out after scoring just 16 runs off 52 balls and was seen struggling while batting.
He returned to the Test squad after skipping most of the five-match Test series against England earlier this year. He did feature in the series opener and scored a gritty knock of 86 runs but couldn’t repeat his heroics against the Najmul Hossain Shanto-led side. Talking about his poor performance, Manjrekar emphasized that the star batter has played similarly throughout his career and was seen struggling at the crease despite scoring runs in his last Test match.
“This has been the KL Rahul story. Amazingly, he plays a brilliant inning at the Test level and in the next two or three innings it seems like he has got a pair in the last Test. Even when you saw him bat today, it almost seemed like an innings without purpose. That can happen, it happened to me in the second half of my career where everything was internal,” Manjrekar was quoted as saying.
He also compared Rahul’s struggles with that of his performance, especially during the latter stages of his career where the demons inside his mind didn’t let him concentrate on his game.
“I went in to bat just thinking about my technique and I am going to play the ball well, imagining a certain kind of delivery coming my way. And I’ve got to play instead of going to your instinct as a batter which I think all the other Indian batters practice that is about getting runs. Even if you’re defending looking for ones and twos,” he revealed.
Manjrekar reckoned that Rahul is struggling due to his temperament which has affected his career as he currently bats at an average of 33.87 after playing in 50 Test matches till now.
Ashwin and Jadeja rescue India on Day 1
“That is more of a temperamental problem for KL Rahul that has plagued him for 50 Test matches because of the number of matches that he has. He’s got some brilliant hundreds but an average of 34. He’s got hundreds, not one or two, quite a few and in testing conditions but the average of 34 tells you about his temperament and that we got to look at it today as well,” he concluded.
Rahul has been in a lean patch in the longest format since 2022, failing to score fifty in 10 innings in the Test series against Bangladesh and the Border-Gavaskar series in India last year.
He has scored just 125 runs in the last 10 innings that he has played at an average of 12.5 and his highest individual score was 23. But then he bounced back by scoring a century in December last year against the Proteas and then a gritty innings against the Ben Stokes-led side earlier this year. But he hasn’t performed consistently and thus his position in the team was also questioned as the team management decided to back him instead of Sarfaraz Khan.
The Men in Blue were reeling at 144/6 on the first day against the Bangla Tigers whereas R Ashwin and Ravindra helped the team bounce back by stitching a partnership of 195 runs. They helped the team post a respectable target of 339/6 at stumps on Day 1.
