'Keeping wasn't as easy as I thought it would be'

#Manbun. #Hairart. #Tattoos. As with many contemporary cricketers, it's easy to compress KL Rahul's lifestyle into hashtags. But his recent avatar is a few light years away from that of the boyish, seemingly retiring 22-year-old who went through a cathartic journey from Melbourne to Sydney on his first international tour.

Fifteen months down the line, Rahul is visibly bigger and stronger, with his hulking biceps and craggy abs giving a shout out to several hours of gym-work. There is, of course, the long hair crafted into a samurai bun, complemented by a dense beard and a booming voice. Add to these, frequent displays of bromances on social media, and it is clear that this isn't Rahul, the 'Test cricketer' from 2015. Rahul himself makes his distaste for such typecasting clear when he declares: "I am not going to worry about Test matches when I go to Zimbabwe."

Ahead of his maiden limited-overs international tour, Rahul's recent numbers bear out his growth as a shorter-format batsman, despite a middling 2015-16 Vijay Hazare 50-overs tournament where he scored 158 runs in six innings. He was Royal Challengers Bangalore's third-highest run-getter in IPL 2016, with 397 runs at an average of 44.11, including four fifties in 12 innings, behind only Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers, and comfortably ahead of Chris Gayle.

After being left out for Royal Challengers' first two games and totalling 30 runs in the third and fourth, Rahul got a lucky break against Gujarat Lions in Rajkot, playing only because Mandeep Singh was injured with just minutes to go for the match. Rahul made it count with an unbeaten 35-ball 51 and went on to smash two more half-centuries in successive games to nail down his spot. And he was as much at ease in the middle order as he was in his comfort zone, opening the batting.

Rahul's preparation leading into the IPL had, however, been far from ideal since he was still recovering from an injury. But the downtime afforded him perspective on what he needed to do to become a better multi-format cricketer. When he joined the Royal Challengers squad, he wasted little time in seeking out Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers.

"Having spent time away from cricket, I got time to think about what I could do to be successful in the shorter format. I realised it was very important to keep things simple, stick to my basics and perform to my strengths, which is to play cricketing shots.

"I spent a lot of time with Virat and AB, talking to them, and asked them questions about what they thought I could do to better, to improve my cricket, and to be successful in the shorter format. Their ideas and feedback did help me, and once I got a couple of starts in the first two games, I was feeling confident. And after I got those fifties, I knew I could go out and express myself and leave all these things behind about the stats and what people say: 'I cannot play the shorter format or I hadn't performed so far'. I just started focusing on how I could get runs in T20."

Rahul is pragmatic about the realities of an age that requires players to switch between different formats at short notice. That his generation has been exposed to multiple formats from a young age, he feels, has helped him adapt to their specific demands. "We all understood as kids growing up, when we were 19 or 20, that this was how cricket was going to be [played] in the next four-five years," he says. "We started working towards being good at each format from a very young age. It challenges you as a person; it challenges you as a cricketer. Your skill-sets are tested every game, every day.

"Now, in a T20 game, every over you encounter different situations and you have to be better than the bowler or better than the opposition. These kinds of challenges are what we as sportsmen live for. With each day and with each game, you get to learn a lot, and I go back home and sit and think of what I've learnt from this game and what I have done well or what I could get better at the next thing. I try to come back as a stronger player, as a stronger person."

Rahul talks about the Sri Lanka series last year as an example, when he was troubled by Dhammika Prasad's incoming deliveries, which got him out three times in as many innings. Without expanding too much, Rahul says he worked out where he was going wrong. "Once I came back to India and I sat down and watched those videos, I was sure there was something I could do better," he says. "I felt like I was going too hard at the ball.

"But, you are playing international cricket and they are going to bowl more good balls than what we get here in first-class cricket, so I have learned to accept that fact. There were a few things that I had to work on, obviously, but it wasn't just the incoming ball I was getting out to."

According to Rahul, the Zimbabwe tour will also give him an opportunity to brush up his wicketkeeping skills under MS Dhoni's guidance. "I enjoyed doing whatever little I could do and contribute for RCB, and I have always enjoyed wicketkeeping," he says. "I will have to work a little harder. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. Different role, different challenge [and] I hadn't done it in a while. [I] will get some time with MS Dhoni again in Zimbabwe, and my plan would be to work with him on my wicketkeeping skills and see what feedback he has."

Rahul's confident demeanour melds with his mastery of the modern-day cricketer's journal of "sticking to the basics and expressing myself" again when a journalist asks him about his preferred batting position in the Zimbabwe series. "Prefer to be in the playing XI, that's the preferred position," Rahul says with a slight grin. "I don't care where I play. The team challenges me and the situation challenges me, so it doesn't really matter where I play."