Sehwag advised KL Rahul to 'go out, trust your gut feeling and enjoy the game with a smile on our face'

Stating that KL Rahul had an amazing Indian Premier League (IPL) would be an understatement. He was signed up by a new franchise Kings XI Punjab, entrusted with the opening responsibilities, his partner was Chris Gayle but Lokes Rahul out batted him all through the tournament. The right-hander made his intentions clear in the very first match he scored the joint fastest fifty in the history of the tournament.

Rahul ended IPL 2018 with 659 runs in 14 matches with an average of 52, a strike rate of 158 and scored 6 fifites in the season. Kings had a really fragile middle-order and more often than not the opener had no partners. He even batted through the innings but failed to get his team over the line as no one else stood there beside him.

Viru kept it simple

It was Ravichandran Ashwin’s first season as full-time captain in the IPL and he was working with Virender Sehwag who is the boss of the team from the last couple of seasons. The duo as it appeared shared a really good working relationship and it worked well for the team but only in the first half of the tournament, the slid so badly that failed to qualify for the playoffs after being at the top of the table for a while.

Rahul recently talked about the experience working with Sehwag, he said: “I did go up to Sehwag and spoke to him at different times. He kept his game very simple and that’s his advice to all the players — to go out, trust your gut feeling and enjoy the game with a smile on our face. That’s the kind of freedom he has given to everybody, not just me, be it batsmen or bowlers,” he told IANS.

“And this is the brand of cricket we want to play as a team, not always keeping in mind the result. We want to be fearless and aggressive. In a tournament like the IPL, sometimes it will work and at other times it won’t. But we have to keep going,” the 26-year-old added.

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