What’s the story?
Indian opener KL Rahul, who is on the sidelines following his latest injury setback, said that he is aiming to achieve peak fitness within a time frame of three months as he hopes to get back to the national side, fitter and stronger than ever.
Forced to miss out on the 2017 IPL as well as the upcoming Champions Trophy event in England, Rahul admitted that getting injured frequently has been frustrating but added that he won’t let it become a hindrance on the international arena.
“The target is three months, but you never know,” Rahul said. “The last 12 months, I have gone up and injury has brought me down. There has always been this up and down. But every time I went back I was hungrier than the last time. Maybe the hunger came because of those breaks.”
In case you didn’t know...
Despite a promising start to his international career, Rahul has had his fair share of injuries with the 25-year-old forced to miss a number of matches on the ground of his fitness. At the beginning of a busy home season for Team India in 2016, Rahul got off to the worst possible start picking up a hamstring injury during the first Test against New Zealand at Kanpur, that ruled him out of the remainder of the Test series as well as the ODI series that followed.
A forearm injury saw the Karnataka batsman ruled out of the third Test against England while he played through the pain during the Border-Gavaskar trophy against Australia, scripting six 50+ scores in seven innings to help India reclaim the trophy with a 2-1 series win.
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The shoulder injury, however, meant that he missed out on the IPL and will watch the ICC Champions Trophy from the sidelines next month.
The heart of the matter
KL Rahul has made steady progress as an international cricketer and is now a vital member of Virat Kohli’s side in all three formats. In fact, he was the quickest to achieve the feat of international centuries in all three formats, reaching the landmark in just 20 innings.
The 2016 IPL was a landmark tournament for the wicketkeeper-batsman as he truly established himself as a consistent player and Rahul feels that the time he spent sharing the dressing room with the likes of AB de Villiers and Virat Kohli helped him break the self-doubt that was holding him back.
The focus for now though is on the injury front as he aims to achieve peak fitness and hopefully cut down on the time he is forced to spend on the sidelines. Most of the injuries he has picked up have been minor ones and that’s where the focus is as he wants to cut down on the niggling injuries.
What’s next?
Rahul feels that he has improved tremendously as a batsman, something he puts down to the confidence gained from playing more and more international cricket as well as the backing he has received from his skipper for Team India as well as RCB, Virat Kohli.
With tours to the West Indies, Sri Lanka and South Africa lined up later this year, Rahul will be aiming to make a strong comeback and carry forward from his fine show against the Australians at home.
Author's take
Rahul is one of the most promising youngsters in the Indian ranks and has a bright future ahead of him. But we have seen what injuries can do to talent and so it is imperative that he focusses on minimising the number of injuries he picks up. Let's hope that he comes back strong from his latest injury setback as he has always done in the past.
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