KL Rahul is India's stand-in captain in absence of Rohit Sharma.
Under KL Rahul’s captaincy, Team India has not performed well so far on the South Africa tour. Leading the team in the absence of Virat Kohli during the second Test in Johannesburg, India lost by 7 wickets. Following this, Indian team also lost the first ODI at Paarl under Rahul’s leadership by 31 runs giving a 1-0 lead to the opposition.
Talking about experience, Rahul has captained in the Indian Premier League as well but without much success. He was the captain of Punjab Kings for 2 consecutive seasons, 2020 and 2021. Punjab ended the tournament on sixth spot in both the seasons. So, what’s exactly the issue with his leadership? Well, the legendary Dale Steyn says, not much.
The former South African bowler has said that he doesn’t find anything questionably wrong in his captaincy and if he can get a “little bit” right, things will fall in place for the stand-in skipper.
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“If you look at KL, I don’t think he did anything wrong with his captaincy. He had a good day. But there were just those little differences, the little bit of planning that was the difference between India and the Proteas. South Africa were walking up to the bowlers, India stayed in their crease. It’s the little things KL is going to get better at,” Steyn said during the Byju’s Cricket Live Show after the match.
Team India registered a memorable 5-1 series win when they last played a bilateral ODI series in South Africa. But this time it’s a different story, having lost the opener of the 3-match series, Rahul doesn’t have much time to get his act together as a captain.
“He must understand today was his first game as captain. They haven’t played a lot of white-ball cricket. Some of the guys who have come out haven’t played cricket in a while. Little bit of ring rust. So they are going to get better. But he has got only 24 hours to turn this whole thing around. So today was a good day for them. They must have learnt from South Africa what they did right,” added Steyn.
The second ODI will be played at the same venue on Friday, January 21.