“There is no use of having batting depth in KL Rahul’s teams,” Sanjay Manjrekar criticises LSG skipper for his batting approach

The former Indian batsman Sanjay Manjrekar is of the opinion that there is no use in having batting depth in KL Rahul’s teams because he himself decides to bat through the innings and the batsmen, who are slotted down the order in his teams, arrive so late at the crease that most of the time, they fail to make an impact.

KL Rahul, who was captaining Lucknow Supergiants (LSG) in IPL 2022, scored 79 runs off 59 balls while chasing a score of 208 in the eliminator yesterday against RCB. The opener had to cope with a lot of criticism for that because many people thought it was a very slow knock.

According to most of the fans, since Rahul didn’t bat in high gears in the middle phase of the innings, LSG left themselves with too much to do in the latter stages and eventually couldn’t chase the target down.

Sanjay Manjrekar, who was analyzing the game on ESPNCricinfo, agreed with the opinion of the fans, as he insisted that KL Rahul bats for such a long period of time that the entry of the finishers is delayed. Batting long is not an issue, but what’s more important than batting long in T20 cricket is batting quickly.

Not the first time KL Rahul batted like that: Sanjay Manjrekar

Sanjay Manjrekar said that it was not the first time that KL Rahul looked to bat long in a chase rather than batting quickly. He had been doing that when he was the captain of Punjab Kings as well and there also, finishers like Nicholas Pooran were left with very few deliveries and too much to do, something which happened with Evin Lewis yesterday.

Evin Lewis was held back in the batting order by LSG and was used as a finisher, but when he arrived at the crease, he had no time at all to have a look at even a couple of deliveries and get the feel of the surface. The West Indies left-hander had to go after the bowling straight away and he couldn’t connect his shots.