Acceptance and Execution - Fundamentals to KL Rahul launching his game to new sphere

The frailties that include being beaten by Stuart Broad with two inswingers; one leaving his stumps scattered and the other trapping him caught plumb in front in Southampton. The frailties that also include falling to Chris Woakes’ set-up and throwing his wicket away to another inswinger and then being castled by Ben Stokes in Trent Bridge. 

Despite being the perfect prototype of the modern-day batsman who grew up with the influence of T20 cricket and developed a game that was suited to all three formats, Rahul’s case seemed to be reaching a level of tragicomedy. The final nail in the coffin came when he was dropped from the side to accommodate his best friend Mayank Agarwal for the Boxing Day Test. The future seemed bleak, confidence shaken, and questions even being put to him about his intent and as blasphemous as it may seem right now, questions were asked about his quality as well.

However, once the Indian Premier League came calling, he realised that his game was built on the purest of techniques and it could only come back to its original unflinching avatar if he would start scoring those runs. “I have been a part of the Indian team for a long time but when I was sitting on the bench and suddenly got into the team for a couple of matches, I wasn’t feeling the same. I needed a few more matches to get my confidence back,” he admitted after his match-winning display in the first T20I in Auckland on Friday.

That he scored a lot of them eventually became the marker line in what has now become a story worth telling in Ted talks. Not only did he own the stage of Indian Premier League, with 593 runs with six fifties and one century, he also ensured the brief time off the national team worked well to steer him clear off messy mind-set. Rahul returned back to the grind of domestic cricket, where he has always been a superstar, and helped Karnataka clinch twin limited-overs titles, while also mentoring a group of talented youngsters in the process. 

The little burden of expectations that had engulfed his game seemed to be all but gone and a new dawn was awaiting him. The storyline might seem the same as of numerous other sporting comebacks, but there is a unique sweetness attached to this tale. He never let the underperformance in one format affect his heroism in the other, even coming to a point of showing two different personalities within a span of days. 

The avatar that we are seeing right now is not just someone who means business but also a confident individual who is ready to make up for the lost time. It's not that the amount of runs he is scoring is not enough; Mind you, he has nine 50+ scores in the last 16 limited-overs games. He easily comes close, if not already, to being recognised as the world’s best T20 player of the current time. If the speculations are anything to go by, then he will regain his place in the Test side for the New Zealand series but might have to wait for the opportunities with India all but sure to stick with Rohit Sharma to partner Mayank Agarwal on the tour.

The Rahul that we are seeing now is a less complicated version who can land you success at any “position” you ask him to perform, can “keep” your computer clean and stop it from hanging. He is the perfect updated version too, that will give you “balance”, no matter if you're using a slow 2G connection or a high-speed broadband. He is the ONE for India right now, radiating positivity like never before. But in hindsight, that one shot of Sam Curran would always stand out - that one when he came forward, negated the swing to drive through cover. Cricket might try hard and then harder to pin him down on the mat, but hey, the evolution will see him emerge through that once again, making you wonder “Why has it not always been like this”.