Rahul content after giving himself 'the best chance to succeed'

Not many will know better than KL Rahul that outcomes in cricket - Test batting in particular - are not always proportional to your skill, preparation, fitness and application.

Rahul has had an anomalous Test career to back it up. He came into this Test having scored hundreds in some of the most difficult conditions during his career - seven out of eight away from home - but never having become the dominant Test batter his game suggests he should be. He averaged 33.57 before Headingley, which is quite underwhelming for a player of so many great innings.

"The sooner you learn that there is no connection [of your game, preparation, etc] with the outcome and the results that you get, the calmer you can be," Rahul said after scoring 137 in an India third innings that threatened to go off the rails in the morning session of the final day. "And I feel like that's the only thing that gives you the best chance to play at this level for a long period of time. And that's something that I've consciously done as well.

"Having learned this from the seniors that I looked up to, it's something that I've understood and try and do, not just in Test cricket, but in cricket overall. Just all you can do is your best in terms of preparation and giving yourself the best chance to succeed. But again, there's no guarantees. When you have a good day, you are happy. When you have a bad day, you're still happy that you had the opportunity. That's how I look at the game."

The latest in Rahul's career was the Australia tour where he was called upon to open in Rohit Sharma's absence and scored 26 and 77 in Perth followed by 84 in Brisbane. At the end of the series, though, his average read 30.66. It left him bitterly disappointed.

"It's always disappointing for a batter when you get starts and don't convert it and get a big score for the team," Rahul said. "I was happy with the way I was batting in Australia, but very disappointed at the end of the series that I couldn't convert. I think I had opportunities in every game, I got starts in every game, and in an ideal world, I would've wanted to convert all of those innings into big knocks.

"But, unfortunately, I couldn't do that. And that's how the game goes sometimes. Sometimes you get a good ball, sometimes you play a bad shot. It's part of the game, so you learn from the mistakes, and that's something that I learned from that series, just to make sure that once I get a start, try and make it count and transfer as many runs as I can."

This has been a trend in Rahul's career. He has never had a series in which he has scored 400 runs. That is part of the reason why he has never nailed a position in the batting order.

On his last tour of England, he got to play only because of an injury in the nets to his good friend Mayank Agarwal. Then he got the opportunity to open in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy because Rohit was on paternity leave for the first Test.

Rahul has taken batting in different positions in his stride. "The last couple of years I've forgotten what my position is and what I'm comfortable doing," Rahul said. "I'm happy to be given different responsibilities and different roles. Makes the game exciting and makes me want to challenge myself and train that much harder and work on my game a little bit more. So I've quite enjoyed doing that.

"And the last couple of series, my role has been to open the batting, and I've enjoyed doing that as well. Yeah, I mean that's something that I did growing up and all my early years as a cricketer was me opening the batting. So yeah, I'm happy that I'm back doing that, and I'm happy that I'm doing the job for the team."