Rahul ready to be flexible and bat wherever the team needs

K.L. Rahul's century in the second warm-up game against Bangladesh in Cardiff on Tuesday had skipper Virat Kohli grinning. After all, the jigsaw of who will bat at no.4 for India in the World Cup has been sorted for now. Even though the national selectors led by M.S.K. Prasad had decided to pick him as the reserve opener, the team management felt otherwise and Rahul is open to any role in the team.

"It is a team game, and you need to be flexible and be ready to bat wherever, or as a player you need to be ready to take up whatever role is given to you," he said. "Every batsman who has played at this level knows how to handle pressure and knows how to handle the roles and responsibilities given to him."

Indecent comments in a chat show had seen Rahul being suspended from the national team. While he has generally refused to speak on the same, the batsman did open up about the episode and said that the time away from the game helped him work on little areas that he felt he could improve on.

"I tried to make the best use of it (the time off). I felt like there were a few things with my batting and technique I needed to fix," he said.

"I worked with my coach back home in Bangalore, and the India 'A' games gave me a little time with Rahul Dravid to just speak to him about mental preparation and how to handle pressure and how to handle low confidence and low form. The best way to get back to scoring runs is to find that form in the middle, and I got that opportunity. So from there, I just carried on and I knew that my batting was fine and I was very hungry to come back and score runs for whatever teams I played."

--IANS

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