KL Rahul on Monday (April 27) acknowledged the pressure of replacing MS Dhoni as a wicketkeeper in India’s white-ball team.

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Notably, Dhoni is out of competitive cricket after India’s World Cup 2019 campaign. Rahul kept the wickets in the limited-overs series against Australia in January and also during the tour of New Zealand.

After donning the keeping gloves, his batting performances have also improved by many folds. He was the Player-of-the-Series in India’s 5-0 T20I series win over the Kiwis and also scored his maiden ODI ton on the same tour.

“I was nervous when I was doing it for India because of the crowd pressure. If you fumble, people feel that you cannot replace MS Dhoni. The pressure of replacing a legendary wicket-keeper like MSD was immense as it involved people accepting someone else behind the stumps,” Rahul told Star Sports on its show ‘Cricket Connected’.

Before performing the keeping duty for India, Rahul had done the same for his state side Karnataka as well as in the Indian Premier League. Therefore, it is not something new to him.

“People who follow cricket know that I haven’t been away from wicket-keeping for too long as I donned the gloves in the IPL and every time I played for Karnataka,” the 28-year-old said.

“I am always in touch with wicket-keeping but am also somebody who is more than willing to take up the role if the team needs me to,” he stressed.

KL Rahul was supposed to lead Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) in the 13th edition of IPL. But a nationwide lockdown due to COVID-19 outbreak forced the BCCI to suspend the cash-rich event indefinitely.