T20 World Cup Rahul defends Rahul

Rahul was India's best batsman in the first match, but he had a poor series overall.

In this post-match interview after the victory against New Zealand, Rahul defended himself against accusations that his form is poor. He said that he has been exceptional in practice games and that the rest of the team should be praised for their efforts which led to victory.

“Lot of you (media) wasn't there when KL was batting in a practice game. He was superb. It happened to him and he is a tough guy, so he will be back soon," said Rahul.

KL Rahul was the only batsman who scored runs for India during the first warm-up match against New Zealand. He scored 35 off 32 balls with one boundary and two fours before getting out to an excellent delivery from Trent Boult that brought him down to 3 runs for just three balls left on the board after being put into bat by Virat Kohli at number seven position with no score on board yet.

"It happens to batsmen; he got out to a really good ball," the wicketkeeper-batsman said, without going into detail about Rahul's admittedly poor form as an opener across formats.

In fact, Rahul was not at his best during the match against Australia when he played only six balls before being dismissed by Tim Paine off Mitchell Starc for 29 runs in 14 balls (1x4) with no boundaries hit off him yet again following his awful run since making his Twenty20 debut against Pakistan last week where he scored only two runs before being dismissed by Mohammad Irfan after scoring 2x6 with 2x4s bowled by Mohammad Amir off him."

While he also credited Kedar Jadhav for his efforts during the 67-run stand with him which took India to 129/5 in 20 overs before they beat New Zealand by six wickets at the Eden Gardens, Rahul refused to read too much into the win.

“it's a good sign that after such a short period of playing together, we were able to put up such a good total," Rahul said. post-match press conference. "But we all know what happened in our last game and how that ended up. We lost two games back-to-back and had to come here with fresh minds."

"I think we've done well," he added when asked about his form as an opener in international cricket since July last year when he scored 562 runs at an average of 71 while making three centuries including two against Bangladesh in World Cup Qualifier 2nd semi-final match held at Visakhapatnam supported by Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB).