IPL 2018 | Good back or bad back, if you pitch it in Dhoni’s arc, he is still going to hit it miles, says KL Rahul

IPL 2018 | Good back or bad back, if you pitch it in Dhoni’s arc, he is still going to hit it miles, says KL Rahul

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KXIP opener KL Rahul has asserted that it doesn’t matter if Dhoni has back troubles or not, if it is in his hitting zone he will still hit it out of the ground. Rahul also believes that Chris Gayle's return to form is bad news for all the other teams as he can single-handedly win games.

After struggling in the first couple of games, once again there were doubts about MS Dhoni's pedigree as a T20 batsman. The former Indian skipper was criticized for struggling to keep up with the run-rate and consuming a lot of deliveries upfront. However, Dhoni answered all his critics back in style and let his bat do the talking in yesterday's match against Punjab. Chasing 197, he almost took Chennai Super Kings home from a tough position. With 55 required in 3 overs, Dhoni unleashed his power hitting abilities to bring it down to 17 in the final over. However, his back troubles came back to haunt him as Mohit Sharma bowled an excellent final over to deny CSK their third win. 

KL Rahul, who looked in sublime touch in his stay at the crease and made 37 in 22 balls felt that it was a good experience for his team’s bowlers to face such an onslaught. 

“The plan was to bowl wide yorkers to MS (Dhoni) because he was struggling with his back and we felt like he couldn't reach many. Whether good back or bad back, if you pitch it in his arc he's still going to hit it miles. It was a good learning for our bowling attack,” KL Rahul said in the press conference after the game. 

Rahul’s new opening partner in yesterday’s game, Chris Gayle, was back to his best as the big Jamaican scored a brutal 63 to set the tone of the innings. Gayle was one of the last players to be picked in the IPL and it was not sure if he could fit into the scheme of things for KXIP as they had a lot of opening options. But now, with Gayle back in form, it poses a nice selection headache for Ravichandran Ashwin and the KXIP management.

“It is amazing news for our team and bad news for the other teams that Chris Gayle is hitting the ball well. We all know he is a player who can win games single-handedly and demolish attacks on his day and that's what he did today. We want him and we expect him to continue this form forward,” said Rahul, who saw most of Gayle’s innings from the non-striker's end. 

The trend of the chasing team winning has been broken as both teams that batted first won in yesterday’s games won. KL Rahul feels it is necessary to assess the conditions before deciding what a good target is going to be. 

“If you are batting first as an opener you give yourselves a couple of overs see what's the wicket behaving and then try to assess what a good score on that wicket would be and then you plan accordingly. By the look of the wicket, I don't think anybody can tell the wicket is going to behave a certain way. Even though this is our home game, we are still getting to know what the wicket is like. Once we play a couple of overs then we decide what a good target on that wicket is,” the 25-year-old added. 

Punjab will face table-toppers Sunrisers Hyderabad at home in their next game scheduled on April 19. It will be interesting to see how KXIP plan for the SRH who are the only unbeaten team left in the tournament. 

“Every team in the IPL is good, we are going to stick to our plans, we will stick to our strengths, we will see where we can better Sunrisers Hyderabad. Our plans are going to be simple whichever team we face and we will go out there and play aggressive cricket,” Rahul added. 

With 4 points from 3 games, KXIP are placed second on the points table and thanks to their superior net run-rate, a win against SRH might see them ascend to the top. 

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