Venkatesh Prasad Blasts KL Rahul For His Slow Knock vs Hong Kong: India opener KL Rahul is copping flak from all corners for his timid, overly conservative knock against Hong Kong on Wednesday in the Asia Cup 2022 encounter in Dubai.
Rahul batted at a snail’s pace in his knock and scored 36 runs from 39 balls, on the same pitch where Suryakumar Yadav hammered 68 runs in 26 balls.
KL Rahul had bagged a golden duck against Pakistan three days ago and was in desperate need of runs. However, his runs versus Hong Kong raised questions on his intent and approach as his strike rate of 92 was amongst the worst for any batter who has faced as many deliveries as he did.
Venkatesh Prasad tears in KL Rahul with sharp criticism
While India and skipper Rohit Sharma have endorsed an aggressive brand of cricket, KL Rahul’s innings was anything but. He hit 2 sixes and no fours in his stay which lasted about an hour.
Rahul just refused to show intent at the start of his innings: he was batting on 4 runs off 11 balls before he got a free-hit, when finally he opened up his arms to send Haroon Arshad for a six and his first proper intentful shot.
After that, KL Rahul again went back into his shell while Kohli also started slowly following Rohit Sharma’s dismissal. Both Rahul and Kohli exchanged a series of singles and doubles with the latter scoring only 16 runs in 20 balls in the powerplay.
Rahul broke his shackles once again in the 9th to clobber Aizaz Khan over deep-midwicket and his strike also shot up over 100 for that moment. But it dipped back again after he played down more dots and dealt in more singles.
Eventually, on the last ball of the 13th over, Rahul got out to spinner Mohammad Ghazanfar, edging while trying to slog him and the wicket-keeper, Scott McKechnie, took a good juggling catch to complete KLR’s dismissal.
Like all the fans, Rahul’s innings also confused and frustrated the former cricketers. Former India pacer Venkatesh Prasad took to Twitter to slam the India vice-captain.
“Is there something in the pitch that is not visible. Simply can’t fathom this approach especially from KL Rahul. #IndvsHkg” Prasad wrote on Twitter.
Here is Venkatesh Prasad’s tweet:
Is there something in the pitch that is not visible. Simply can't fathom this approach especially from KL Rahul. #IndvsHkg
— Venkatesh Prasad (@venkateshprasad) August 31, 2022
Thanks to Suryakumar’s belligerent knock and Virat Kohli’s 59 runs off 44 balls, India posted a mammoth total of 192, which Hong Kong came up 40 short of. With this victory India have now entered the Super stage.
