The haunted legacy of KL Rahul

KL Rahul was in control, the ball was soft, he had a set partner at the other end, and then there was sadness. This time we were spared the KL Rahul haunted gormless look as he’s dismissed. The one that makes him look like the best friend in the action film who has to die to be avenged. The political leader who gets ousted before his party is elected. The boyfriend you have before you find the one. This time we never saw that face, because it was about the take. 

Nathan Lyon bowled short, KL Rahul tried to force it away, and a thick outside edge flew. Usually, it would have gone away for runs past slip. Instead, it is stolen in mid-air. Steve Smith launches himself at slip to intercept the ball and then clutches it between his fingers and his wrist to keep it. 

It would be another sad story in the long, tortured journey of Rahul, if it weren't for the fact that Smith had dropped an absolute sitter off him earlier. Maybe it’s more like his new legacy, which is constantly complicated. 

It was a really good knock, but India were so far behind in the game at that point that it may not have meant as much if the lower-order did not turn up. The innings wasn’t epic or barnstorming; it was soft hands and a drop.

So often Rahul has played an important knock, but someone else has done better. Or he’s batted well, but India have lost. When he fails, and India do, it is his fault. The glory he should earn, never turns up. Yet, the blame he isn’t always due seems to hover above him always. 

Steve Smith allowed KL Rahul to be the hero, and then snatched it away. It was another day in the haunted legacy of KL Rahul. 

This is a glorious way of showing how KL Rahul’s career has gone so far. When he started off, he had a very good record in Asia, but struggled overseas. Of recent times, he’s found batting at home almost impossible, yet has somehow turned himself into a touring specialist.

This is such a bizarre pattern. Is he good at home? Is he good on the road? Has he made a deal with the devil at midnight to change what he is good at? We don’t know. He is simply not allowed to be good at both things at once, as if his career had desecrated an ancient burial ground.

There are plenty of things that stick to him, like the word 'selfish'. When a billionaire owner suggests that about one of their players, it’s not going away so easily. But that was the narrative before, especially in the IPL. Rahul exploded in that tournament by taking everyone down. Then, he spent years batting slowly for 16 overs, making a lot of runs, and desperately trying to catch up at the end. 

He bats like the guy in the horror movie who starts to board up the basement before everyone is safely inside. He’s talked about how part of this is down to his IPL teams not having good batting line-ups around him. But it’s clearly also become a thing. 

When it comes to Test cricket, KL Rahul has scored six of his eight hundreds outside Asia. He has centuries in six different Test-playing nations.

The narrative is always complex with him. But KL Rahul was someone who was selfish, not good against the best bowlers and could only average in the mid-30s in Tests. With Ishant Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane out of the side, it meant that KL Rahul was offered up as a sacrifice to the Indian cricket netizens. If you ask many of them, they would say, 'KL Rahul is just not good enough.'

There was always a reason to doubt Rahul; so why bother even looking into it?