LSG captain KL Rahul has been slammed by fans and the cricket fraternity for his slow approach in the eliminator against RCB.
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Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) can take a lot of heart from their performance in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 as they finished at the fourth spot in their debut season after losing to Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) on Wednesday. Under the captaincy of KL Rahul, LSG won nine matches and lost five to accumulate 18 points, and become the second team to qualify for the playoffs at the third spot.
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However, their quest to reach their maiden IPL final, was short-lived as they were knocked out of the tournament by RCB. RCB banked on unbeaten knocks from Rajat Patidar (112 not out) and Dinesh Karthik (37 not out) to put up a challenging total of 207/4 on the board after being asked to bat. LSG were restricted to 193/6 in the chase with RCB pace spearhead Josh Hazlewood picking up three wickets. LSG captain Rahul (79) and all-rounder Deepak Hooda (45) put together a valiant knock but it went in vain.
Rahul scored 79 runs off 58 balls at a strike rate of 136.21 which included three boundaries and five hits over the fence. His aggressive intent was not visible for a large part of the innings as he looked to anchor LSG past the finishing line. It has been the case for the Team India opener in the IPL since the last three years as he has looked to play risk free knocks more often.
“We’ve seen enough of KL Rahul to now know that when he becomes this player, the captain, the key player of the side… I mean Virat Kohli loves that kind of responsibility. Dhoni loved it. I think Rohit Sharma, barring this season, generally likes that kind of responsibility. Maybe KL Rahul temperamentally is not suited to take this kind of responsibility where he is the man who has got to get the job done. They are just made of different mettle and maybe KL Rahul isn’t,” Sanjay Manjrekar said at ESPNcricinfo’s show T20 Time:Out.
“KL Rahul’s innings is something that we’ve seen before when he was captaining Punjab Kings, for example, [and they] would fall short of a run-chase,” he said. “The scenario would be the same. You’ll have KL Rahul batting right till the very end, they would have lost three or four wickets and people like [Nicholas] Pooran would come in like Evin Lewis came in the last two overs and Krunal [Pandya] in the last, [Marcus] Stoinis in the last three. So [for them], it’s a bit working with the crumbs that are left. You’ve got to come in and try to make up for the lack of pace that the innings had,” he added.
Former India head coach Ravi Shastri, meanwhile, said that the LSG captain should have taken a bit more chance. “When Hooda and Rahul were going, I think even though he did as well as he did, KL could have taken a little more chances because Hooda was going. Take a little more chances and he could have targeted someone between the 9th and the 13th over because Harshal was going to come back in the end. If they had got the required rate down at the stage, that would have made RCB a little nervous,” Shastri told Star Sports.
