“He was in a lot of pain” - KL Rahul opens up on Rishabh Pant batting with a lot of pain

Indian opening batter KL Rahul has revealed that the Indian keeper-batter Rishabh Pant was batting through a lot of pain on the third day’s play of the ongoing Lord’s Test in the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy.

Notably, Pant injured his left hand on the second day’s play off Jaspit Bumrah’s delivery while he was attempting to stop the ball. Interestingly, Dhruv Jurel came out to take up the keeping duties as Pant walked off the field.

"He was in a lot of pain gripping the bat. When the ball hits your bat, there's a lot of friction and he got hit on the gloves as well a couple of times, which was not ideal. He kept telling me that he was missing out on a lot of balls that he felt should have gone for boundaries,” KL Rahul said at the post-day press conference.

"He was very disappointed with that. I just had to tell him to weigh his options and see what are the best shots he can score boundaries of rather than getting upset. He seemed pretty calm otherwise. Yeah, he was in pain, but he was more than happy and more than willing to do the job and fight for the team," Rahul added.

Furthermore, Rahul also reckoned that India wanted to scalp a wicket with six minutes left in the dying moments of the third day’s play. However, Zak Crawley’s time-wasting tactics meant that India could bowl only one over.

"There were six minutes left. It is a no-brainer that any team will bowl two overs with six minutes to go, but it was a bit of theatrics at the end. We know how difficult it is for a batter to come to bat for two overs when you've been in the field all day. A wicket at the end of the day's play would've been perfect for us. Tomorrow, even without that, I think we would've been fired up anyway,” Rahul stated.

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