It took a while for
KL Rahul
to change people's perception about his game and the skills he possessed, and the Lucknow Super Giants captain narrated that story on the Star Sports segement of 'Captains Speak' ahead of his team's
IPL 2024
match against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Wednesday.
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"(During my) Initial days, I am surprised I hit a six because I was not a very strong T20 or ODI player back then," said Rahul, who has played for four IPL teams since making his debut in the league in 2013.
He started his career as a middle-order batsman, before adding wicket-keeping skills to his resume and also transforming his batting to include big-hitting skills in order to shed the tag of a Test-match player.
"Ek tag lag gaya tha ki yeh Test=match player hai, ye kabhi nahi khel payega one-day ya T20, isme itna skill nahi hai, itna strength nahi hai. It took me a long time to get out of that mould just to change people's perception about my
cricket," said Rahul
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It was the 2016 IPL with Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) that saw Rahul break the shackles and emerge as a skillfull white-ball batsman who eventually earned a place in the Indian team and went on to score a century on his ODI debut.
"In 2016, when I played the IPL, I had a really good year with RCB and after that I think people started seeing KL Rahul as a one-day and T20 player as well. So after many years of quietly working hard behind the scenes, I got my time, got my spotlight," he added.
After representing RCB to start his IPL career, Rahul played for the Sunrisers Hyderabad in 2014 and 2015 and returned to RCB in 2016. From 2018 to 2021, he was part of the Punjab Kings (earlier Kings XI Punjab) squad and eventually moved to his current team Lucknow Super Giants as captain in 2022.
He has scored four centuries in the IPL and was the Orange Cap winner in 2020 with his tally of runs standing at 670.
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