5 Indian players who enjoy a lot of backing from skipper Virat Kohli

3. KL Rahul

Although KL Rahul made his debut under Dhoni, it is under Virat that he has been playing a lot of his games. He kicked off his career with a century in Australia in his second Test. However, he has had a fair share of ups and downs in his career. Rahul averages 35 in matches where Virat has held the command and has scored 2,061 runs in 62 innings.

In Sri Lanka in the 2015 tour, barring one century, he never even managed to get to the double figures in five Test innings. Since November 2017, Rahul only scored 452 in 20 Test innings and 228 of those runs came in just two innings. In South Africa, he only contributed 30 runs in the four opportunities that he got. Also, in the recently concluded England series, KL only scored 150 runs in the first nine innings. But, Virat Kohli kept faith in him and he got a 149 that almost helped the team win the fifth Test.

In the nine ODIs that Rahul has played under Virat, he has 61 runs at an average of about 9. However, despite all the inconsistency and the failures, the Indian skipper has a lot of trust on Rahul and hence, he gets to feature in the side regularly.