Showed KL Rahul his own batting videos to help overcome poor form, says Sanjay Bangar
BCCI
Sanjay Bangar has stated that he showed KL Rahul videos of his own batting when he was going through a rough patch. Barring one century and half century in 23 innings from that start of 2018, Rahul has fared very poorly on the tours to South Africa, England followed by Australia.
KL Rahul had made his Test debut for India on the tour to Australia in December 2014 and even scored a century in that series. India had a long home season in 2016 where they hosted New Zealand, Bangladesh, Australia and even England apart from the tour of West Indies. It was Rahul’s breakthrough year as he had amassed 539 runs in nine innings at an average of 62.02. He followed it with 633 runs in 14 innings the next year but he endured his toughest year in 2018. The Karnataka batsman had scored 468 runs in 22 innings at an average of just 22.28 as it was a challenging year with the away tours of South Africa, England and Australia. He had nothing to show apart from a century in the final Test against England.
India batting coach Sanjay Bangar opened up on the strategy followed by him to ensure Rahul is back among the runs.
"After his debut, he scored prolifically in each part of the world before the drought of runs hit him. We had to assess whether anything in his game had changed drastically. And if anything had indeed changed, the key was to get the player back to the methods he'd been following when he was successful," he said, reported Cricketnext.
"So we showed KL a lot of videos of the times he had been batting beautifully. He was getting across in his initial movement, which had to be changed a bit. Also, when a player goes through a bad patch, self-doubts tend to creep in. Advice comes in from all quarters. For KL, the challenge was to remain confident of his own methods,” added the 46-year-old.
Bangar has been with the Indian side since 2014 and it was during this period that India had endured one of its worst defeats in England. The then 25-year-old Virat Kohli had a horrendous run as he had only scored 134 runs in ten innings. In comparison, Bhuvneshwar Kumar had scored 247 runs with three fifties in ten innings and even Mohammed Shami had a fifty to show. Fast forward to the 2018 England tour, Kohli blasted two hundreds and three fifties to emerge as the highest run-getter with 593 runs in ten innings. It was a fantastic turnaround and Bangar opened up about the process behind the same.
"What worked for Virat was he played close to the body. He showed great discipline outside off stump in tough English conditions. He was playing close to his front pad and very late. That required individual discipline. The thing Virat did differently was he stood outside the crease to reduce the extent of swing. Some of our batsmen tried to use his gameplan but erred in reaching out towards the ball,” explained the former India player.
The T20 World Cup was played that year followed by a three match ODI series against Bangladesh for the Indian side that year. The team toured to England right after that and Bangar felt that the poor run in Tests was because the batsmen had still not adjusted to the longest format.
"Whether you stand outside the crease or inside, the key to batting is playing the ball late and close to the body. It could also have been a fallout of going to Test matches straight from T20Is where you're always expected to get bat on ball. In the longer format, with challenging conditions and a slip cordon around, batsmen have to react to the ball instead of pre-determining their shots,” he signed off.
