It has not been a great time for KL Rahul in the recent past. After a torrid time in England, he got a century in the final Test, and then bagged two failures in the home Tests against Windies. There is plenty of talk about Rahul's talent and technique, his aesthetic style of play, but the results are nowhere the same.
There has been a worrying trend for Rahul, there is a problem with the ball which lands on a length and decks back in. His small forward press does not allow him to bring the bat down in a straight line and puts him in trouble. However, batting coach Sanjay Bangar has made all the effort to downplay the incident.
Even today, when the rest of the batting looked fairly comfortable, Rahul was dismissed trying to leave the ball but then played it on to the stumps.
'Rahul's working hard on his game'
"I just felt today's dismissal wasn't really related to the ball coming in because it was probably a fourth stump ball he was looking to leave it. Yes, he has had issues with balls coming into him, he's working on it really hard," Bangar said at the press-match conference.
"But at times, batsmen tend to think a lot about away going balls and at times forget to concentrate about straighter balls or those which pitch generally on stump line. Those are things we've been working on," he further added.
Bangar also believes that people should not read too much into the failures and that Rahul needs to get past the initial jitters and then look to score big.
"If he gets past the 15 or 20 mark - even in the previous game he got out pretty early and even in this game he got to play a few balls but (didn't make it big) - if those dismissals happen after he crosses 20 or 25, then it is a more serious cause of concern," Bangar assessed.
However, Bangar has cautioned Rahul not to doubt his game too much and to keep focusing on what has worked for him in his career so far.
"The most important thing is that there are various voices and then you start to doubt your own methods. For us, he's been a very consistent player. If you look at his career, what his career has been so far - right from 2014 till now - he has had very, very small patches where has not got the runs that he generally delivers for the team," he said.
