India opener KL Rahul endured another failure as the hosts suffered a heavy eight-wicket defeat in the third T20I against England at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad on Tuesday (March 16).
Rahul, who had recorded scores of 1 and 0 in the first two games, bagged another duck in the third match.
Despite the failures, batting coach Vikram Rathour hailed Rahul as India's "best T20 batsman", who needs to be supported during this lean phase.
"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 in the post-match press conference.
"This is the time when we need to support him and I am absolutely sure he will come back out of the lean phase," he added.
Rahul’s low scores could be attributed to no game time since the end of T20 series in Australia and the Indian batting feels the same.
"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)," Rathour 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," he further remarked.
India have now lost two games batting first and according to Rathour, it is difficult to assess the ideal score on Ahmedabad surface.
"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," he said.
"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."
(With PTI inputs)
