KL Rahul Opens Up On His Love For Captaincy After Victory Over Australia In 1st ODI

Under the leadership of KL Rahul, the India National Cricket Team won the first ODI of the three-match series by 5 wickets against Pat Cummins-led Australia National Cricket Team on Friday, 22 September, at the Punjab Cricket Association IS Bindra Stadium, Mohali, Chandigarh.

Winning the toss and bowling first, they restricted Australia to a chaseable total of 276. Mohammed Shami emerged as the top wicket-taker for his side as he bagged a 5-wicket haul and decimated the Aussie batting unit in which David Warner emerged as top run-getter with a score of 52.

Chasing the target, openers Shubman Gill and Ruturaj Gaikwad gave a hard time to the Aussie bowlers as they stitched together 142 runs. After that, KL Rahul and Suryakumar Yadav joined forces and hit terrific half-centuries that helped win the game and take a 1-0 lead in the series.

I’m used to it, I love it – KL Rahul on captaincy

After the match, KL Rahul was asked by the presenter about leading the team in the absence of Rohit Sharma and Hardik Pandya. KL Rahul replied that he is used to captaining and he absolutely loves the leadership responsibility.

“(On captaincy) Not the first time, always happens with me. I’m used to it, I love it. I think the intensity in the afternoon was great, after Colombo this felt like heaven in the start but it was really hot and humid. It gets tough and physically challenging, but we’ve all worked on our fitness and that’s showing on the field. We only played five bowlers, so they had to bowl 10 overs.”

Talking about his batting, KL Rahul said that he was quite satisfied to build a good partnership with Suryakumar Yadav after Gill’s dismissal. He also spoke about his conversation with Suryakumar during their 80-run stand. KL Rahul elaborated:

“After Shubman got out, it was a bit tricky with the set batter out. But managed to build a good partnership with Surya, need to put myself in such challenging situations. (On partnership with Surya) We kept talking about hitting good cricket shots, rotating the strike and this is something all our batters are working on. We didn’t want to get bogged down, we were always on par so we wanted to take it deep.”

With the win over Australia, India also dethroned Pakistan to become the No.1 ranked ODI team, and now they reign supreme across all formats as the No.1 team, having already occupied the top spot in Tests and T20Is.