CHENNAI: Ahead of the auctions earlier this year, KL Rahul spoke with rare candour. In an interview aired on Star Sports after he was released by Lucknow Super Giants, he had stressed on words like 'freedom' and wanting to play in a 'balanced environment'. While he didn't say those traits were lacking at his former franchise, it was clear he thought he needed a change of scenery. "I just want to be part of a team that has a good environment," he had said. "You feel loved, cared for and respected in that environment... that's a perfect fit."
While Rahul and Sanjiv Goenka, chair of the RPSG Group, owners of the Lucknow side, have not spoken about their very animated public discussion following a match at last year's IPL, the situation had felt untenable from that point.
As soon as Delhi bagged the 32-year-old at the auction, there was a multi-layered charm offensive to welcome their new signing. Parth Jindal, one of the team's owners, welcomed him. Others too made him feel at 'home'. When the opener reported to the franchise post the Champions Trophy, there was a special video package with the message 'You are loved. You are ours. You are home'.
His response to that was 'I'm home'.
At some level, you can argue that Rahul, bought for Rs 14 crore, wasn't needed. They had two overseas first-choice batters (Jake Fraser-McGurk and Faf du Plessis), a first-choice overseas middle-order batter (Tristan Stubbs) and an Indian keeper (Abishek Porel). What Rahul gives, though, is a guarantee of a minimum number of runs per season, can keep wickets, can be trusted with his fitness (even if he has picked a few injuries on the way). He can also keep wickets, be flexible with his batting position and is a good player of spin.
Having been part of the leadership group at multiple teams, he does have that experience too. Yes, he was expensive but he ticked a lot of boxes. A signing meant to lift the team's ceiling as well as the floor by a couple of inches.
After a delayed start for Delhi (he was on paternity leave), his match-winning innings on a typical early Summer afternoon at Chepauk — 'feels like temperature' at 39*c and humidity above 70 — has set him up well for the first phase of the tournament. It was an innings filled with malleability, endurance and taking calculated risks to eke out an above-par score on a red-soil surface.
At some level, it's easy to visualise a lot of big Rahul scores in this format. More fours than sixes, a healthy enough strike rate but leaving the door open for some criticism, some singles, employing the sweep shot and pulls off the pacers. He showed facets of all the above-mentioned traits during his 51-ball 77 (6x4, 3x6). It almost spanned the entire length of the Delhi innings (he was dismissed with four legitimate balls remaining in the visitors' innings).
What he did ultra successfully was play the sweep off Noor Ahmad, one of the hosts' better bowlers during the early stages this year.
Off Ahmad's eighth ball, Rahul went down on one knee before dumping the Afghanistan left-arm wrist spinner over deep mid-wicket. It brought back memories of slog sweeps played by Sachin Tendulkar from a different era. A few overs later, he unfurled the more traditional sweep off the same bowler for a boundary. A straight six off Ravindra Jadeja was sandwiched between these two sweep shots.
His knock was critical as it not only allowed the visitors, who have now won three in as many games to start the campaign, to post 183 but it also stopped the hosts from bowling Ahmad, the owner of the Purple Cap.
What made the innings even more remarkable was it came up top, a position Rahul wasn't originally slated to do at 10.45 AM on Saturday. After Du Plessis pulled up with a fitness-related problem in the morning, coach Hemang Badani had a conversation with the Bengaluru man. Rahul, as has always been the case, said 'yes'.
"I'm quite used to it," he said in the post-match presentation. "I was happy that I got the opportunity today (Saturday) at the top of the order. It's more mental, and the pattern and process of getting in. Just getting used to walking in at a particular stage. I like to get used to doing the same thing. Since I have been going up and going down the order, it takes me a few minutes to get used to it. That's something I have been working on — to not take two or three balls. I started off really well."
After a below-par last year at Lucknow — both on and off the field — this is just the beginning the opener (or No. 3 or No. 4, depending upon injuries and game situations) needed.
