ODI World Cup: 'Whatever Little Criticism I Had About KL Rahul, It Was About...': Venkatesh Prasad

KL Rahul once again silenced his critics with his brilliant 97*-run knock against Australia in India’s opening match of the 2023 World Cup campaign. Rahul displayed a lot of maturity and shared a 165-run stand with Virat Kohli after India were three down with just 2 runs on the scoreboard in the moderate chase of 200.

When things were not looking good for India, Kohli and Rahul joined hands and took their time to get set and built a partnership which will be remembered for a long time.

Rahul missed his century but the 97-run is going to be one of the most important knocks in his career.

Veteran India pacer Venkatesh Prasad, who criticised Rahul earlier this year for his poor form, talked highly of him after the knock on Sunday and clarified that his criticism was about Test cricket and not ODIs.

“Well, look whatever little criticism I had about KL Rahul, it was about Test matches, not in ODIs. I’ve cleared that aspect with you,” Prasad told CNN News18.

The former paceman asserted that he knew it was not going to be a cakewalk for India and after losing early wickets, Rahul and Kohli batted patiently and built an important partnership to help India claim an important win.

“Having said that, that partnership was important. In the mid-show, I spoke about it’s not going to be easy to bat., it’s going to be a challenging total to chase and I had said the Indian batters need to show a lot of patience and build partnerships, and that is exactly what KL Rahul and Virat Kohli did,” Prasad added.

Meanwhile, the 54-year-old paceman was not impressed with Pat Cummins’ bowling changes as he said the Aussie captain should have given Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood a couple of overs more.

“Maybe, Pat Cummins could have continued with Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood. Instead of bowling them just four overs each, he should have given them an over or two, because the target was not too big to defend. In that sense, taking wickets was more crucial, using your main wicket-takers as much was possible was more important, he didn’t do that. Australia were definitely 25-30 runs short, 200 was too less a target for India,” Prasad opined.