'Wasn’t a wicket where you could wait for loose balls' - KL Rahul assesses Hyderabad knock

India batter KL Rahul spoke about his knock at the end of Day 2 of the 1st Test against England in Hyderabad on Friday in a conversation on ‘Match Centre Live’ on JioCinema and Sports18.

On missing out on a century: “I could have got out on zero, so I will take the 86. Maybe tomorrow I’ll turn up and feel I missed out on a century. But today, I enjoyed being out in the middle. We watched England play yesterday and I felt like it wasn’t a wicket where you could wait for the loose balls to come, you had to create some opportunities and try to put the bowlers off their line and length. I was looking for opportunities to score runs. I had a few shots in mind and was prepared to take my chances if the bowlers bowled there.”

On his game plan: “I wanted to see where I could get runs. I spoke to Rohit in the morning, and he told me the wicket is a bit slow and you can’t go out there and start playing your shots. So, I just gave myself a bit of time and once I got a few shots going, I was only thinking how I could get runs.”

Zaheer Khan, former India cricketer, spoke of Rahul’s batting, saying: “If we look at Rahul’s career, he has had a lot of injury concerns. There have been times when he has been injured while hitting peak form and he hasn’t been able to capitalise on this form, something you require in international cricket. But looking at the recent past, with the successful World Cup campaign and the SA series, we can say this is a 2.0 version of Rahul.”

Owais Shah, former England cricketer, analysed Rahul’s batting, saying: “If we look at his batting, he attempted the sweep shot only four times, whereas most of the English batsmen played the sweep. He played with a straight bat, got his boundaries and singles with straight bat shots. Many say, we should not play KL Rahul, but I would say he is a wonderful batsman and should play regularly.”

Anil Kumble, former India captain, spoke about the lead India would like to take: “I think these two batters (Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel) will look to stretch the lead to 250. Both of them are good batters and have got a good start. So, I think they would be looking to a lead of 245-250.”