Former India batter Aakash Chopra backs KL Rahul and states that people are “fickle minded” as they want the Karnataka batter to get dropped just because some other player is doing well.
Aakash Chopra Backs KL Rahul Amidst Criticism
Team India leads the 2 match Test series by winning the first Test by 188 runs. Shubman Gill smashed his maiden Test ton while Cheteshwar Pujara brought up his century after a hiatus of three years, as India posted a target of 513 runs.
In return, Bangladesh bundled out at 324, with Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav scalping four and three wickets respectively.
In the absence of their skipper Rohit Sharma who was ruled out of the tournament with a hand injury, KL Rahul led Team India in the match but failed to shine with the bat. In the two innings, the opening batter scored only 22 and 23 runs.
Post the unsuccessful match, KL Rahul starts to receive tons of negative comments while Aakash Chopra backs KL Rahul.
“There is nothing much to see from India’s viewpoint. You want KL Rahul to score runs because he is an amazing player. It is not that he has become a bad player, but the environment in Indian cricket at the moment is that they are blaming Rahul whenever anything goes wrong.
They are asking when Rahul will get dropped. In India, when someone does well, we want the other one to be left out. We are so fickle-minded, we change our opinions so quickly. It seems at the moment that there is no player more ordinary than KL Rahul because that environment has gotten created,” said Chopra on his YouTube channel.
Regarding the ongoing second Test against Bangladesh, Chopra stated that Shubman Gill and Cheteshwar Pujara need to maintain their batting form in Dhaka and star batter Virat Kohli should rise to the occasion and smash a ton.
“I am looking for first-innings runs from Shubman Gill because you will need runs there. Cheteshwar Pujara – once again, a similar style. Runs from Virat Kohli’s bat. We were saying that Cheteshwar has scored a century after so many years.
The truth is that Virat Kohli’s last century came in the pink-ball Test at the Eden Gardens against Bangladesh in 2019. After that, a Test century has not come. He hasn’t played too much cricket as well but hasn’t scored too many runs in whatever he has played. So, you expect runs from his bat, that he also scores a century,” stated Chopra.
Talking about the match, Bangladesh won the toss and opted to bat first and scored 227 tuns in their first inning for 10 wickets loss. On behalf of India, Umesh Yadav and Ashwin bagged 4 wickets each and restricted the run flow.
Umesh Yadav (4/25) and Ravichandran Ashwin (4/71) picked up eight wickets between them, while comeback seamer Jaydev Unadkat (2/50) grabbed the remaining two as India bundled out Bangladesh in 73.5 overs.
