'Coach and captain want to give longer rope to certain players': KL Rahul

KL Rahul (Image credit: BCCI)NEW DELHI: India batter KL Rahul says he is working on improving his game against the old ball so that he can help the team score more runs in the middle overs.Rahul spoke to JioStar after scoring 129 off 87 balls in the third ODI against West Indies. India posted 351, but the total was not enough as the visitors chased it down in 48.2 overs.India had already won the series after taking the first two games.Rahul said batting in the final 10 overs becomes difficult when the ball gets old and starts to reverse swing."It's not been easy to get 80-90 in the last 10 overs. The ball's been getting reverse swing, and even in this game, once the ball got old and soft, and started to reverse swing, as a batter you don't feel confident enough to take on the long-on and deep mid-wicket fielder if it's a big boundary on that side," he said.‘Trying to play with softer, older balls’Rahul said he is now working on finding ways to attack the older ball, especially because he naturally prefers facing a harder ball."...I like the hard ball coming onto me, I can use the pace. So that's something I've been working on, trying to play with softer, older balls and being able to hit sixes with that."I constantly try to get better within my own game, understand my role, understand what a number five and number six batter has to do to consistently put up performances for the team," he added.India want to push towards 370-380Rahul also spoke about India’s preparations for the ODI World Cup in South Africa next year.With teams regularly chasing big totals, Rahul said 340 or 350 is no longer always a safe score. He believes India’s middle order must find ways to score faster and push the team towards 370 or 380.West Indies chased 352 in 48.2 overs in the third ODI. India had also chased a record 406 in the second ODI in Guwahati, completing the chase in just 43.2 overs."We don't want to go too far away from the plan but also experiment a little bit as a batting unit. The goal so far has been about can we score 330-340 while batting first, but we're seeing that 340s and 350s get chased down very easily in one-day cricket," he said."So how can batters, once set, keep pressing on and get 370s and 380s, or push for 400 on a given day. The minute we as middle-order batters go in, the aim is to ensure that we do not take too much time to get going and start rotating the strike and keep hitting a boundary every six or seven balls."The coach and captain have been very clear on the personnel they want to bring in. They want to give a longer rope to certain players who we feel might be important for the World Cup," he explained.Rahul wanted more time in the middleRahul has been batting at No. 5 or No. 6 for some time. He said his 129 against West Indies was important because it allowed him to spend a long time at the crease and test the changes he has been making to his batting."I wanted to spend more time with the bat out there in the middle and the last time I really got to bat for a long duration in ODI cricket, in the middle-order was in early January this year against New Zealand, and since then I haven't really got a lot of time to play a long innings."And next year is a big one, with the World Cup starting in October, so it's important for me to get valuable batting time because off the field I'm trying a few things and I want to test that in the game."And only then will you know whether the work that you're putting behind the scenes is working or not, or what I need to do differently. So yeah, it was important for me to get some batting time," he said.