KL Rahul

Kannaur Lokesh Rahul (Kannada: [kaɳːuːɾ loːkeːʃ ɾaːhul]; born 18 April 1992) is an Indian cricketer. He plays for the Indian national cricket team. He is a former Indian cricket team captain. Rahul represents the Karnataka cricket team in Indian domestic cricket and Delhi Capitals in the Indian Premier League. He is currently the vice-captain of the Indian cricket team in the Test cricket format. Quotes I’ve always been someone who keeps things to himself, but fatherhood opens you up in ways you don’t anticipate. The smallest things, a smile, a little gesture, can completely change your day. I think the biggest surprise is how it makes everything else feel more meaningful, not less A perfect day off is genuinely simple. No alarms, a slow breakfast, maybe take the dog out, just be at home without any schedule. I think when you live out of suitcases for most of the year, you really start to value those ordinary, unhurried days. I try to be very intentional about being present when I’m home. No phone, no distractions, just being there. That’s something I’ve become more conscious of recently, and it makes a big difference It really reflects how I approach cricket and life. On the field, I’m fully locked in as it’s all about discipline, focus, and giving everything I have in that moment. But off the field, I have a much more chilled side. I really value my downtime and those small, almost sacred resting rituals that help me switch off and reset. That’s where the mantra fits in perfectly for me, KL Rahul gets candid about fatherhood, married life with Athiya Shetty: ‘You start finding peace…’ | Exclusive,May 2026, HinduStanTimes by Sugandha Rawal There’s not much you do physically at that time. It just becomes a great time for players or sportspersons in general to sit back and reflect on things that have happened. As for me, I’ve been sitting and doing some homework. I’ve been watching some videos from the past to see the things I was doing right and the areas I could improve on. I’ve been watching a lot of cricket and trying to improve mentally on the areas that I think I can improve. I scored a 100 in my last innings and I hope that when I get back I’ll be in the same form. But at the same time I hope it will be different with my mentality because I’m trying to keep myself as ready as possible. I try to re-create the match situations in my head, imagining what I would do if the World Cup or league is about to begin. And I will be captaining a team for the first time with Kings XI Punjab, so trying to do the homework on understanding my players. So I’ve been busy with all of that. Getting the leadership role is a good progression in my playing career. So I’m using the break to do whatever homework I can for it. I think that innings and series changed the way I looked at myself. I think the confidence that I got from bouncing back so quickly and at a big international stage like that was really good. The confidence made me realize that if I put my mind to it, I could achieve things that I hadn’t even imagined before. So it just changed who I was as a cricketer and the way I looked at sport in general. It’s still very fresh in my mind; more than the Sydney hundred, I think about the MCG innings and what I thought between those Test matches. It’s something at the back of my mind before every match that I go to play. I never want to feel like that again so I keep reminding myself about the reasons why I didn’t do well in my debut Test and what I did well in the next Test that helped me get a century The people who aren’t even playing keep making it harder and harder for you with their home support. I feel having gone and played my first two test matches in a place considered the hardest in the world to play cricket, and having achieved what I wanted to with getting a hundred, I think I did well. I think I learnt a lot of lessons from there about how to keep calm and handle pressure, and doing it at such an early stage in my career has definitely benefitted me. I didn’t know it [being the first Indian to score a debut ODI hundred] at the time. I came into that series with a lot of confidence because I did well in the league just before. But I had suffered injuries before the league and had been in and out of the Indian team. I think we had a settled senior opening pair that was doing well so coming back from injury, I had to wait for my chances. And that kept me on my toes. I had the fire in me that whenever I would get the chance, I will do well. And coming back from injuries, you want to keep performing as well and as consistent as you can. So I went into that Zimbabwe series with confidence and was hitting the ball well. In terms of skill preparation, I don’t think there’s anything we do differently; in terms of skills, we keep it the same across formats. But I think in terms of mental preparation, it changes across the formats. Where we are playing and who we are playing also matters and defines our preparations in team meetings. As players, we also sit down and discuss the strengths of the players we are going to be up against; for example, if we are playing South Africa, I know what strengths KG (Kagiso Rabada) has and how he is going to try to get me out. That’s what we would think when preparing for a Test match. But for a T20, we would think about how we can put the bowler under pressure and how we can score maximum runs off him. So this is the little homework we would do before to put some options in our minds for game time. In the match, we kind of hope that those mental preparations are right and our body will make the right call to pull it off. We also try to train the mind when we practice through visualization. So if I’m in the nets and playing one of the bowlers, I will mentally picture him as an opposition player I’m going to face in an upcoming match. So that helps both your body and mind get into that position so you are ready for the match situation. I’ve also learnt that keeping things as simple as possible is the best way to go. So that’s about remaining in the present, and on the ground you just react to whatever is thrown at you. And that has worked for me sometimes as well. But I think it will always be a process and there is no cricketer who will know exactly what to do; that’s the fun of life and sport. I think when I’m batting in the middle, after facing the first five-six balls, the noise automatically fades away. In that moment, I look at the scoreboard and talk to my batting partner, and my mind focusses on what I need to do for the team. I don’t know how to explain it but I feel like you can find silence even with 1 lakh fans screaming in the stadium. I think we are a huge country and people do have opinions so off the field there are certain times that it does get to you because we are human and it’s not the nicest thing to hear people say bad things about you. I've learnt to take it in a positive way because every time someone criticizes you, there is something you can learn. I think no one has anything against me so if they criticize me it is so I can be better and help the team more. So I’ve been trying to use comments about me as energy to train harder. I think they are the ones it affects the most [when I’m criticized]. As players, when you see your family is getting hurt, that is when you start to be affected or you start to react. As players, we have learnt that it is white noise and doesn’t affect anything . The people who are talking about you are not the ones working for you, they aren’t doing anything for you, and they aren’t paying you. I know that at the end of the day, I will get what I deserve for the hard work I put into the game. So I’ve learnt how to shut that noise out but sometimes it is hard on the family. We expect them to understand that it is part of the game, and for the most part they do understand that. But sometimes it affects them and indirectly it affects us too. I don’t think it’s going to change but I’m hopeful the fans will realize that we are also people. We are the ones working hard, sometimes 8-10 hours in a day, staying away from family, and putting in the effort. I always tell people that before you criticize a player, just put yourself in his shoes and try to understand what he must be going through. I grew up being an opening batsman so that’s the place I’m most comfortable and I know what exactly I have to do. But I’m also a person who needs a challenge and having to bat at different positions is a good challenge for me. So I’m enjoying that challenge. I’m in a place where I just want to win games for my team and country so my batting position doesn’t matter. Number one is that as an opener, you set the pace of the game. That is so thrilling and exciting, especially as a youngster. You don’t know what the pitch is going to be like. You just go into the middle and if you get off to a good start, you set your team up for victory. If it is an ODI or T20, you get to bat the entire innings. One more thing – which is good and bad – is that you face a hard ball and fresh bowlers. If you get off to a start, you know you can mentally dent the opposition, and that gives you such a great feeling to know you can dominate the match and put the bowlers down. It’s also a bad thing to face a new ball; you might sometimes get an unplayable ball and it might just get you out. Sometimes as an opener, you face the swinging balls for the first 10 overs, and you might get out in the ninth over on a seamer, but for the next 80-90 overs the ball doesn’t swing at all; that’s a horrible thing. Your teammates lower down the order take advantage of that and everyone on the scoreboard might have centuries while you as an opener had an early dismissal. So that is really frustrating. Another point is as an opener you don’t get a good break when you bat second. You finish fielding and have to run into the dressing room to change and get into the middle quickly. You don’t get a breather so a lot of times when you are an opener and your team is batting second, your legs and mind could be tired from fielding; so to pick yourself up from that is really hard. Another point is in Test matches when you have to bat out the day; to pad up just for two-three overs as the opening batsman, I really don’t like that. I don’t think any opening batsman likes that. Check out KL Rahul’s live interview on The Mind Behind, May 2020, Redbull by Suhail Chandhok External links Category:1992 births Category:Cricketers from India Category:Living people