Put in to bat under overcast conditions on a red-soil pitch that saw Hasan Mahmud running in with his tail up to run through India’s top order, the hosts were in trouble at 34 for 3.But Rishabh Pant (39) and Yashaswi Jaiswal (56) added 62 important runs for the fourth wicket. The fall of Pant, who is playing his first Test after recovering from the horrific car accident in December 2022, brought Rahul to the crease.
The 32-year-year Rahul scratched around against young Bangladeshi pacers before being dismissed by spinner Mehidy Hasan Miraz for a 52-ball 16.
Talking about Rahul’s innings on an ESPNcricinfo show, former India batsman Sanjay Manjrekar called it an “innings without purpose”.
“This is KL Rahul’s story. It’s amazing that he plays a brilliant innings at the Test level, and the next two-three innings it seems like he got a pair in the last Test,” said Manjrekar.
“Even when you saw him bat today (Day 1 of Chennai Test), it almost seemed like an innings without purpose. But that can happen. It happened with me in the second half of my career, where everything was internalised. I went into bat just thinking about my technique, am I going to play this ball well, imagining a certain type of delivery coming in and I have got to play properly instead of going to your instinct as a batter, which I think all the other Indian batters practice…about getting runs. Even if you are defending, (you are) looking for ones and twos,” he explained.
Rahul was the sixth Indian wicket to fall and the scorecard wore a worried look at 144 for 6. But India’s bowling all-rounders, the spin twins Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, had other ideas.
Local man Ashwin went on to score sixth Test century in his 101st Test and had an unbroken partnership of 195 runs with Jadeja, who was batting on 86 when stumps were drawn on Thursday.
Ashwin will resume his knock on Friday at 102 not out.
Coming back to Rahul’s innings, Manjrekar felt temperamental issues are hurting the right-hander.
“I think that is more a temperamental problem with KL Rahul, which has plagued him for 50 Test matches. The numbers that he has…He’s got hundreds, not one or two, quite a few in testing conditions. But the average of 34 tells you about his temperament, and that we got a look at today as well,” said Manjrekar.
Rahul has scored 2879 runs in 87 Test innings at an average of 33.87, including 8 hundreds and 14 fifties.
“Let’s hope things improve for him in the second innings,” Manjrekar concluded.