The Lucknow Super Giants captain KL Rahul was in the firing line of fans and experts for his slow and match-losing knock of 58 runs in 44 balls against Rajasthan Royals.
In the chase of a tall target of 194 runs, KL Rahul batted at a strike rate of 131 managing only six hits to and over the fence in his 44-ball stay. This meant that even with Nicholas Pooran smashing 64* runs in 41 balls, LSG fell 20 runs short of Rajasthan’s total.
Rahul was returning to action after a quad injury that forced him to miss the last four Tests against England. The IPL 2024 is crucial for Rahul as he aims for a berth in India’s T20 World Cup squad in June. For that, he took the gloves even in the presence of Quinton de Kock and Pooran in the side.
However, he continued to open the innings after there had been strong reports earlier suggesting that he would bat in the middle-order to make a case for a spot in the Indian team’s middle-order. Rahul came out to open alongside de Kock, which meant Devdutt Padikkal, whom LSG had traded in from RR earlier, batted out of his natural opening positon and batted at number 3.
LSG lost early wickets to Trent Boult and Nandre Burger, and more pressure was piled with KL Rahul going slowly. Rahul was 25 (25) at one stage. This forced Deepak Hooda to take more risks than perhaps he should have and Hooda got out for 26 (13).
Rahul opened up his arms later on, but couldn’t bat for as long as he would have liked to after going run-a-ball for more than half of his innings. He was dismissed for 58 (44) and this was another typical Rahul innings which boosted his runs and average but ended up in a losing cause.
KL Rauhl got trolled for his slow innings vs RR:
Rahul said, Bowled well in patches. The target wasn’t a lot. We made a few mistakes. Good to see Mohsin back. Naveen has been crucial for us. We will learn from the mistakes. We need to find ways to win games of cricket. Langer has bought a lot of calmness to the group. We enjoy having him around. Missing a season was really painful.
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