Indian opener KL Rahul played a brilliant innings of 90 runs on Saturday against Australia and in the second Test. He reckons that it was by far his "most difficult" Test innings.
During the innings, Rahul controlled his instincts and anchored his innings pretty well only to become the only man standing for the Indian team at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium. Talking about those innings, Rahul said, "The wicket wasn't the easiest to play on. It was by far the most difficult innings I had to play in Test cricket. It was challenging but I was relishing the challenge. The team needed me to stay there for as long as I could and get some runs on the board. That was the role and responsibility given to me, so I tried to play that out to the best of my ability."
He further added, "This is my home ground and I have played on wickets like these before and I had a fair idea of how to play on this wicket. I was looking to put the loose balls away and give the good balls the respect it demanded. I am happy with the way I batted."
When asked about his approach towards those innings, Rahul said, "It's important for an opener to not let a spinner settle and that's what I have been trying to do in the past 6-8 months. But on this wicket, which was a little damp and had some bounce, I felt if I swept I could get a top edge and they had the fielders back right from the first ball."
He further elaborated, "So I looked to play time and tire the bowlers out. We were getting singles easily when I and Ajinkya (Rahane) batted and then Karun (Nair) came in. So the strike was being rotated and we were getting 3-4 runs an over, so that's when I decided to restrict myself and waited for them to pull the fielders behind that didn't happen as we kept losing wickets."
Rahul also went on to defend the dismissals of Kohli, Rahane and Karun (Nair) in the first innings, he said: "I don't think Kohli, Rahane and Nair threw away their wickets. As a batsman, you have to look to take some chances sometimes. Kohli's ball didn't spin as much and went straight on which can happen anytime. Karun and Ajinkya looked set and were getting the runs easily and the gameplan was to attack the spinners whenever we could but sometimes it doesn't go your way and it's a bad day for a few batsmen. We have to take it in our stride and come back stronger in the second innings."
The 24-year old opener concluded with a hope that the Indian spin duo of off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin and left-armer Ravindra Jadeja will get into the groove early of Day 2. He said, "Once the cracks start opening up, its going to be very difficult to bat on this wicket and we all know Ashwin is a top class bowler and once he gets a couple of wickets he gets into that rhythm then he is going to run through the Australian batting which we are very confident of. Jadeja didn't get to bowl a lot today but like Lyon he has a lot of rough for the right-handers outside the off-stump and if he can bowl consistently we can surely get the wickets."
