As the first team to advance to the Super-4 round of the Asia Cup, the Indian cricket team is having a fantastic run. The Rohit Sharma-led team appears to be a confident bunch after victories against Pakistan and Hong Kong. Ahead of the T20 World Cup, Team India’s performances from players like Virat Kohli, Hardik Pandya, Suryakumar Yadav, and Bhuvneshwar Kumar are quite encouraging. KL Rahul is one player who hasn’t performed as well as anticipated, though. Rahul earned 36 points off of 39 balls against Hong Kong while going down for a duck against Pakistan. His slow innings attracted a lot of attention, but Gautam Gambhir, a former Indian cricket player, has spoken out in support of him.
“When he hit a six of that medium pacer (Haroon Arshad), the next ball was also in the same slot. If he could have got one more big hit, the momentum would have shifted. KL Rahul has so much ability. I will confidently say that in the Indian dressing room he has Rohit Sharma-like abilities, maybe bit more than that. He has shown that in international cricket. I hope with this 39-ball stay, he will have the confidence to play freely in the next matches,” Gautam Gambhir said in a discussion on Star Sports.
“You talked about pressure, when you are so close to the World Cup, you think of scoring big runs, so that you are on that plane to the World Cup. So, you don’t want, you don’t have runs in your bag. I had felt the same ahead of the 2011 Word Cup, during the South Africa series. The pressure that I felt to score runs in that series was more than the pressure hat I felt in other series.” India next play on Sunday in the Super 4 against the winner of the match between Pakistan and Hong Kong.
