Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) skipper KL Rahul has been among the runs in the ongoing IPL season, but his strike rate has put him under the scanner time and again.
On Wednesday (April 19), Rahul once again drew flak for his cautious approach while opening the innings against Rajasthan Royals (RR) at Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur.
Rahul played out a maiden over against Trent Boult after RR won the toss and elected to field first. He scored 19 off 19 balls in the powerplay and eventually perished for 32-ball 39.
After the game, Rahul defended the circumspect approach, citing that the ball was not coming on. However, former India head coach Ravi Shastri isn't ready to buy his reasoning.
"Absolutely (needs to get the strike up). All that talk about 160, I don't buy it. When you have two chances, if you convert that 39 to 60 or 70, 160 becomes 175. You need someone in the top 3 to carry on and play that long innings," Shastri told Star Sports.
"If the Rajasthan Royals team had done that. They would have won this game. Plenty to learn from this game for both sides on how to approach and taking chances at the right time. It's still early days in the tournament. Rajasthan is No. 1 and Lucknow is No. 2 and they will learn a lot from this," he added.
Coming to the match, the Super Giants managed to beat the Royals by 10 runs despite posting 154/7 on the board.
At the end of the match, Rahul said he and his opening partner Kyle Mayers realised that the nature of the pitch at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium won’t allow them to target 180.
"At the 10-over mark, the message we sent out was that maybe 165 is a good total, so, let us try to get to 160. Did not have to set ourselves very high. They are a quality team, they have good bowlers. We fell 10 runs short maybe but we made it up with the ball in the end. There was no dew and that was fair on both teams," Rahul said at the post-match presentation ceremony.
"We came in yesterday and we were thinking 180 is a par score. Knowing the batters they have, the mindset was to get 15 runs extra. When Boult bowled the first over, me and Kyle had a chat and we said that the ball was not coming on. We assessed it quite well but if there were a couple more partnerships in the middle, we could have gotten more," he added.
