Rahul scored 132 * on 69 balls against RCB
“I kept wondering if my skills would remain the same when I returned to the sport. I had nightmares. A couple of times I woke up in the middle of the night because I dreamed that I had forgotten how to choose the line and the length.”
Royal Challengers Bangalore bowlers would be strongly at odds after tonight, but those were the words of KL Rahul who, in a preseason interview in August, admitted that the crippling anxiety in the COVID-19 forced recess of nearly five months left him scared. However, on Thursday, his game-winning century against his former employers had not a shred of that doubt, but had all the class that makes Rahul one of the best T20 hitters on the circuit today.
That the first century of the season has come from Rahul’s bat is not entirely surprising. His T20 chart, particularly in the IPL, has seen a steady rise since his move to Kings XI Punjab in 2018. He has been the third and second best IPL hitter in the two most recent editions, respectively. What has changed between then and this (delayed) season was that almost as soon as KXIP let R Ashwin go, they appointed their most consistent performer, Rahul, as their next leader. With some bowling-inspired changes in his season opener, Rahul the captain had already earned accolades. But against a power-packed, hitting RCB, who had chosen to chase just to exploit the spray advantage, it was time for Rahul, the hitter, to turn heads.
It probably worked to the fear-ridden Rahul advantage that KXIP was hitting first and without any pressure on the scoreboard, allowing him to pace his innings as skillfully as he did in Dubai while doing the full turn. He displayed his vast range without being flashy, as he kept pushing the ball and looking for a strange limit to keep the score in constant motion until it was time to unleash with the departure of Glenn Maxwell, who fell cheap in 16th. He picked out the bowlers to attack, but even against RCB’s two most faded bowlers at first, Umesh Yadav and Dale Steyn, there was no rush to get going. He waited for the gifts, which Yadav handed out as early as the end of the first over, and Rahul tickled him on the first of his 14 limits. He picked two more of Steyn through the covers in the next over, bringing his team’s tally to 50 after the powerplay overs.
As his team expected of him, Yuzvendra Chahal dealt damage in his first over of the game by eliminating the well-established and fit Mayank Agarwal. But Rahul made sure that the remaining leggie quota of three in the middle overs, although one of which Virat Kohli saved for later, was played with the utmost caution. He settled for 16 of the 13 balls he faced from Chahal, but crucially denied him another success to the despair of RCB. And once he finished off Bangalore’s best bowler, he went on the attack, beginning with the release of Steyn’s predictable slower and shorter ball.
What followed was a family nightmare for RCB. All the control Chahal wielded in the intermissions to slow down KXIP was undone by his deadly bowling woes that resurfaced more prominently this time around, while Rahul seamlessly shifted gears to help his team loot 60 of the last three. . He himself went from 90 to 60 at one point to finish an undefeated 132 of just 69, racking up his second ton of IPL, the highest score by an Indian in the competition and the highest of any captain in 13-year history. Of course, it came with a bit of luck, but Rahul made sure the two generous pardons in the death overs turned an already dismal score into an unlikely target, as RCB’s culprit and patron Kohli admitted after the embarrassing defeat. . Rahul scored 6, 4, 0, 6, 6, 4, 4, 6, 6 of the nine deliveries he faced after the second knockdown, helping his team exceed his expectations of 180 by a fair margin to place 207 .
“Actually, I haven’t been that confident. I spoke to Maxi [Maxwell] Yesterday. He said ‘how do you feel’, and I said I don’t feel completely in control of my hitting. He said, ‘You must be kidding, you’re hitting really good.’ Honestly, I was nervous, but I knew that if I spent time in the middle, hit some balls from the middle of the bat, it would all calm down, “Rahul said after sweeping around half a dozen awards being offered after the game. RCB has a power-packed hitting lineup and we had to get 2-3 wickets up front and that also meant putting runs on the board. “
“As a leader, you will have to be aware of the fact that many players will be rusty,” Rahul had said in the same preseason interview. And so when the chips went down after a painful Super Over in his first tournament, the captain decided to take responsibility for himself. That Bangalore collectively couldn’t get anywhere near Rahul’s score alone now should give him a well deserved sleep tonight after all.
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