Ahead of the ODI series against South Africa, India’s stand-in captain KL Rahul admitted he does not have a definitive answer to the side’s batting struggles against spinners, adding that the batters are already trying to find solutions to this issue.  

India come into the ODI series, starting at the JSCA International Stadium on Sunday, on the back of a 2-0 series defeat in Tests, where their batting issues against spinners came to the fore yet again.

“I cannot give you a definitive answer. I can only say that we have not been able to play spinners well. We understand and recognise that this is a part of our game and that we are not able to play better against spin bowling. You spoke about Gavaskar sir speaking on the issue – we can talk to him and understand what we need to do better against spin. We are already trying to find ways to improve. I don’t think it will happen overnight.”

“I don’t know the answer as to why we used to play earlier and why we don’t play well now. There are many reasons for this. But we can only think about how we can do better as players and individually, how can we get better and when such a situation comes back, in the next 6-7 months our series will be in Sri Lanka and then the Indian home series will be in Australia – so, how can we do better?”

“What are the technical changes we need to make? These are the things that we individually try to seek answers and try to do better. That’s all we can do and we used to play very well against spin bowling. So, maybe we will reach out to those players and our seniors and try to learn from them,” said Rahul in the pre-match press conference.

In Guwahati, Rahul reached out to an off-break from an off-spinner, but was undone by the drift and dip, resulting in him being castled. Asked if he had any regret over not taking the aggressive shot at that time, Rahul said he had no such regrets.

“No, there’s no regret of not trying a different shot. There’s a regret of executing what I did. It is a Test format. At the stage that I was playing, it was the last few overs of the day. I don’t think that’s the right time for me to try and step down and hit the bowler for a boundary. Looking back, maybe I would have but it was only the second ball of the over.”

“If I had stepped down and gotten out, maybe that would have been a question mark in my own head as to whether that was right or wrong. At that point in time, I think defending was the right option to do which I didn’t do well enough. That’s what I take away from that dismissal,” he added.

He also insisted that the Test series loss won’t have any bearing on their approach in the ODI series against the Proteas. “Both are very different formats. The players are different, the setup is different. We won’t carry that. Obviously, the Test team will be disappointed and hurt that we couldn’t do well in Guwahati and Kolkata. But it’s important that we forget that and focus on this series.”

“The conversation has been about how we haven’t played a lot of one-day matches since the Champions Trophy. So, it’ll be important that we catch that rhythm and try to get that momentum of playing one-day cricket and performing in ODI cricket. We’ve all played, so we’ll keep talking about what tactical changes we’ll have to make and how we’ll have to play with the mindset. We’ll try to do the same,” he concluded.