I have played my role to the best of my ability, says KL Rahul

India's KL Rahul during the group stage match of the ICC Cricket World Cup against Bangladesh at Edgbaston recently. Pic/Getty Images

Birmingham: Scores of 57, 30, 48, 0 and 77 are by no means a poor performance from KL Rahul, but such are the expectations from the Indian top order batsmen that anything less than a century is not considered to be up to the mark.

Ever since Shikhar Dhawan got injured after the Australia match, Rahul was moved to the top. The template for the Indian batsmen is clear - one of the top three must go on to score big runs. That's the only way India can aim to score 300-plus.

Whenever the top three batsmen have failed to fire, India have been in a spot of bother like it happened against Afghanistan (224-8) and West Indies (268-7).

While Rohit Sharma has been on song with four centuries already, his partner Rahul has not been able to capitalise on his starts. On Tuesday, Rahul scored 77 against Bangladesh, which would have eased some pressure off him after being out for a duck against England.

On a good batting pitch, Rahul hit some beautiful cover drives, but his 92-ball innings looked scratchy. After Rohit departed in the 30th over, Rahul was expected to bat through with skipper Virat Kohli, but instead, three overs later, he tried to cut a widish delivery from Bangladesh pacer Rubel Hossain and ended up edging it to wicketkeeper Mushfiqur Rahim.

With India just a match away before the semi-finals, Rahul realises that he must consolidate his starts. "Personally, I feel I have been going well, but am not fully satisfied as I haven't carried on after some of the starts. When I say 'convert' I mean getting to, say, 35 or 45 overs as often as I can because in these conditions, it is the set batsmen who can do the most damage. "I have played my role to the best of my ability. If I stick to my processes, the results will come," said Rahul after the win over Bangladesh.

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