'I still wake up to that nightmare' - KL Rahul on India's heartbreaking loss in World Cup 2019 semi-final

The 2019 World cup semi-final was extremely heartbreaking for every Indian fan. The team had done really well to enter the knock out stages. In fact, Virat Kohli and Co were the table-toppers in the league stages. Having won seven out of their nine matches (with one being abandoned due to rain), India were pretty much the favourites to enter the final.

However, New Zealand punched above their weight to knock the Indian team out of the tournament. It was a tough pill to swallow for the fans, but it was much more saddening for the players of the side. Recently, in an interaction, KL Rahul revealed that many of the Indian players haven’t been able to get over that loss yet.

‘I still wake up to that nightmare’: KL Rahul

KL Rahul, who was the opener in the semi-final, said if he would want to change any match from his career it would be that particular one. He said that match still haunts a lot of the guys from the Indian side. KL Rahul also went on to say that it was tougher to forget as the team had performed well throughout the tournament before the semi-final. He also said that he still has nightmares about that match.

“It has to be the World Cup semi-final. I think most of us are still not over that loss, it still haunts us sometimes. I can’t imagine what the senior players must have felt but you know in a World Cup it just becomes even harder and knowing that we played so well in the entire tournament. Yeah, so, you know I still wake up to that nightmare sometimes!” KL Rahul said during the Instagram live chat session with TV presenter Suhail Chandhok.

KL Rahul himself didn’t have a great outing. India was set a total target of 240 runs in the match. Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli got out early and Rahul followed them. At this stage, they found themselves struggling at 5 for 3. Though the team recovered later on to cross 200, the initial backstep had caused a lot of trouble.

Moving on from that, when Chandhok said who he would ask to bat for life, the opener named the Indian captain Virat Kohli. “I’ll go with Virat (Kohli) because I know, everybody knows he is a great player. We share a great friendship and he will give it all to save my life,” KL Rahul further said.