IPL 2024: KL Rahul batting lower will benefit LSG, says Former India star

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KL Rahul has been a key performer for Lucknow Super Giants in the IPL over the past two seasons.

The LSG captain has been a prolific run scorer for them and has also led the franchise to the playoffs in 2022. He was ruled out with an injury midway IPL 2023, but is expected to captain them again this year.

Though there is no doubt about KL Rahul's credibility as a batter, sometimes he has been criticized for batting slowly. The Indian player is free-flowing at the middle, but he has opened for LSG and sometimes has failed to find the aggressive touch in his innings.

KL Rahul batted with a strike rate of around 113 last season, which dipped from his previous strike rate of 135 in IPL 2022. He scored more than 600 runs in IPL 2022 but his scoring rate was significantly lower than the other openers.

Former India player Irfan Pathan thinks the LSG skipper can resolve the issue by going down the batting order this season. With Quinton de Kock and Kyle Mayers already in their setup, Pathan suggested the 31-year-old to play in the middle-order.

"He is a car with gears in an era of automatic cars. He can bat in any gear from first to fifth. He even has a sixth gear. So considering that KL Rahul batting down the order might not be bad at all," Pathan said during a chat with Star Sports.

"The team combination could include both Quinton de Kock and Kyle Mayers in such a scenario. If both of them get a place, they can go with an all-Indian pace attack," he added.

Rahul's immediate focus will be to regain full fitness ahead of the 5th Test match against England. He was ruled out from the Ranchi Test but is likely to feature in the Final encounter in Dharamshala.