In the first qualifier played between Lucknow Super Giants and Royal Challengers Bangalore, LSG had to face defeat. After the loss in this match, former India batsman Sanjay Manjrekar has focused on KL Rahul’s batting. He said if starter KL Rahul bats fast instead of long then IPL or international cricket team can benefit a lot.
Rahul scored 79 runs on 58 balls as he chased the goal of 208 runs for Lucknow Super Giants against Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL 2022 Eliminator match at Eden Gardens. But he was sacked by Josh Hazlewood in the 19th, leaving Lucknow losing the tournament by 14 runs.
Rahul batted slowly to the end of the powerplay, until it took 99 runs from the final seven overs. He then started hitting fast, followed by Rahul scoring 79 runs on 58 balls with a strike rate of 136, but it wasn’t enough to get Lucknow through to Qualifier 2. Questions have arisen after Rahul’s slow innings.
Former India batsman Sanjay Manjrekar said that KL Rahul himself has the ability to do this. He sees that every time he has decided to play the big fish, he has been able to do better. He played some great shots against Josh Hazlewood. But he had changed his approach, which made him want to hit longer instead of playing fast.
Manjrekar said, if I was his coach, I would have asked him to hit fast even if he is the captain, because we have seen many games where teams would benefit a lot from KL Rahul hitting fast instead of long runs. .
Manjrekar has further commented that Rahul cannot take the main batting responsibility in the team, especially when he is captain in the IPL, something a captain like MS Dhoni or Virat Kohli has done.
Although Rahul has scored more than 550 runs in each IPL season since 2018, his goalscoring ratios from 2019 to 2022 have been 135.38, 129.34, 138.80 and 135.38, which is lower than his average. of 142.49 for India.
Manjrekar advised Rahul to have fun and express himself while batting instead of carrying the burden of winning the game alone. He said: “As a coach, I would try to tell them that I don’t expect them to win games. Just go out on the field and have fun hitting. You’ll see the results have started to come in.