Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) skipper KL Rahul pulled his hamstring early in the clash against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) on May 1. Rahul tried to save a boundary but pulled his hamstring in the process. He was in agonising pain and was holding his right leg.
The physios rushed to his aid and even the stretcher was taken out. But after some medical attention, Rahul got back on his feet with the help of physio. At first glance, it seemed that the LSG opener had pulled a hamstring, an injury that ruled him out for months earlier.
The incident took place on the last ball of the second over of RCB’s innings after Faf du Plessis won the toss and opted to bat first. Du Plessis hit a boundary off Marcus Stoinis’ bowling but Rahul got injured trying to save a couple of runs for his team.
In the next over, Krunal Pandya took over the captaincy in Rahul’s absence from the field. Rahul did not take the field for the rest of the innings.
He was unavailable to bat for a better part of the second innings. He came out to bat at no.11 when LSG needed 24 runs from eight balls. Unable to run, Rahul failed to score a single run from three balls.
Earlier, Rahul lost the coin toss at LSG’s homeground, Ekana Cricket Stadium. Rahul made just once change to the playing eleven. He dropped Avesh Khan to include Krishnappa Gowtham in the side.
“It is just going to be hardwork on this pitch for both teams. Just one change. Avesh Khan misses out and K Gowtham comes in. Having played here twice, we know that spin will be used more than pace here. Just want to hold our composure during crunch moments. The only thing we spoke about is to not come with a fixed mindset and we gotta bowl well and restrict them to a low total,” the opener said at the coin toss.
Rahul has not been in the best of forms of late. He has scored 274 runs from eight games at an average of 34.25 including two half-centuries. However, his strike rate of 114.64 has been under the scanner. In the run chase at home against Gujarat Titans (GT), he scored a half-century but could not finish the game in a low-scoring affair.
LSG XI: KL Rahul(c), Kyle Mayers, Deepak Hooda, Marcus Stoinis, Krunal Pandya, Nicholas Pooran (wk), Krishnappa Gowtham, Ravi Bishnoi, Naveen-ul-Haq, Amit Mishra, Yash Thakur
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