|| India Correspondent ||
Team India have been playing a five-match T20I series against England. So far three games have taken place in Ahmedabad and India tried three different opening pair as well. But their key player KL Rahul has somehow lost his form as he failed to score a double-digit so far.
However, batting coach Vikram Rathour backed him, citing that three poor performances can't change the fact that KL Rahul is India's "best T20 batsman" who needs to be backed during his rough patch. he said after their eight-wicket defeat against England on Tuesday. Rahul has so far scored 1,0 and 0 and the reason could be of less game time since the end of the T20 series in Australia in early December as well.
"Anybody can have a lean phase and KL has been our best batsman in T20 format. He is averaging 40 plus with a strike rate of 145 and 3 failures doesn’t change the fact that he is the best batsman we have in this format," Rathour said after the third T20 International.
"This is the time when we need to support him and I am absolutely sure he will come back out of the lean phase," the batting coach further added. However, he also agreed on the fact that rustiness could be a reason and it only needed one good shot to get back in the form.
"I agree they do tend to get rusty when they are sitting out but only thing we can do is to provide them practice. They are having a lot of net sessions and even on middle (centre strips)," he said. "That's all they can do and we can just hope that one innings or one shot and they will be back in form. People like KL Rahul."
India have now lost two games in the five-match T20I series and according to the former player, the pitches were tricky in all three games. And India lost in two games while batting first.
"It is a difficult surface to assess what will be a good score and the bounce makes it tricky when you start batting. The ball stops and we saw some variable bounce. So you can’t assess how many runs will be a good score. Every game we have played on different surfaces and as a team it is tough. We have had 3 games now and next game hopefully we can do better if we bat first," he concluded.