KL Rahul shares how it is to open with Yashasvi Jaiswal, says he saw shades of himself in left-hander

Indian batter KL Rahul said he saw shades of himself in Yashasvi Jaiswal when he batted with the left-hander in the opening Test of the series against Australia. Rahul was opening for the first time with Jaiswal but the latter was dismissed without troubling the scorers in the first innings.

However, the left-and-right hand batting combination added 201 runs for the opening alliance against the Aussies, which is the highest opening stand for India in Australian conditions.

While Rahul scored an impressive knock of 77 runs in the second innings, Jaiswal scored a magnum opus knock of 161 runs to put India in front. 

“It’s the first time I’m batting with him, I don’t think we have batted together before this. In the first innings we did not get enough time together, but we did have a few chats before in training sessions, and I try to share whatever little I’ve learned from playing here in Australia. Just tried to speak with him, calm him down. I saw a little bit of myself when I was here 10 years ago, opening the batting for the first time,” Rahul said during a press conference ahead of the second Test in Adelaide.

On the other hand, Rahul admitted that it takes a bit of time to get acclimatize to the pink-ball. The flamboyant batter scored 27 runs in the pink-ball warm-up match against Prime Ministers XI.

“This will be my first pink ball Test match. I don’t have the game experience like some other players have in the team. It is just about speaking to the guys and get to know what were the things that they found hard and how did they manage to adjust and make changes. In practice, I felt that it was a little different in terms of how you watch this ball,” KL Rahul added in the same presser.

The second Test match between Australia and India, which will be a pink-ball game, will be played at Adelaide Oval from December 6 onwards.