The friends met and decided to find a way to beat negativity and fall back in love with the game. Cricket in anonymity, with friends, was decided as the way to go. They decided on the ground near the Bangalorewhere a friendTejas Subramaniam runs Just Cricket Academy. Every day, early in the morning, for the next 10 days or so, a group of friends, all cricketers, would drive away from the city.
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David Mathais, Rahul’s friend and former Karnataka bowling allrounder, details the comeback story. (Express Photo)
It didn’t take long for Mathias to spot the problem in Rahul’s batting. In 2018, in England, Rahul had been stuck at the crease and playing all around the front pad. Problems with the incoming ball. Problems with identifying the off stump. Problems with hitting the ball too hard. Problems with the hands, head, and feet. It had looked insurmountable, almost. Not to the friends.
“I could see that he was having problems with the incoming ball and that the bat was too far away from the body and head was falling, “Mathias tells The Indian Express. “I felt that hands were away from the body and since the bat tends to be heavy, it gets to be dragged even further away. When the head isn’t in a great position, then your bat doesn’t travel in a straight path. When the ball comes in there is a gap to go through. And top-class bowlers can exploit it easily, and they did I That’s what I felt. I just saw it and said it. I must have said 10 other useless things but that one landed home! I didn’t realise that would make such a large difference eventually in his batting.”Two dismissals screamed about the problem from that 2018 Test series. Chris Woakes and Ben Stokes had cut the ball in to clatter the stumps and the pad. The bat would come from a wider arc and by the time the downward swing would be in motion, the ball would be cutting in towards danger that Rahul would try to yank his bat down even quicker. It would come down all crooked. The head would fall outside the line of the off-stump. He was a sitting duck to both the nipbackers and the straighteners.As the 10 days wore on, and since the problem was spotted very early on in the piece, Rahul started to relax and start falling in love with batting again. “It was a calm relaxed environment. Even the academy boys weren’t there then. And the coaches are the ones we all have worked with from childhood. No judgement. No tension. Just friends, bowling and hitting the ball around for hours and hours.” They recorded his batting too, checked with the old videos, and realised that it had all begun to sync in. Rahul was happy that he wasn’t going too hard at the ball once the hands and head fell in place.It comes from good hard work on balance in the stance. The alignment at the crease,” Mathias says.
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