Former India batsman Ajay Jadeja said that KL Rahul lacks leadership qualities and he hasn’t displayed the aura of a good captain in the last two IPL seasons as PBKS captain.
Punjab Kings (PBKS) have won just 14 of the 25 games played under his leadership. “If you look at KL Rahul, he’s been the captain of this team for the past two years, I never get the feeling that he’s a ‘leader’. Whenever this team has gone through a good phase or a bad phase, we never look at him. The team (PBKS playing XI) that’s playing today, the changes that have been made, do you think KL Rahul would have made that?
“Someone becomes an Indian captain based on his philosophy because he should be a leader. I have not seen that in KL Rahul so far because he’s very soft-spoken and adjusts to everything. If he becomes the captain one day, then it’s a certainty he’ll last the longest because a guy ready to adjust can stay longer in that position,” Jadeja told Cricbuzz.
“But there are leadership qualities where whether I agree with his philosophy, the Indian captain should at least have one philosophy. Because there’s a huge difference between the captaincy of an IPL team and the Indian team,” he added.
Jadeja further added that Rahul is like MS Dhoni but hasn’t taken responsibility on his shoulders during his tenure as the skipper of the Punjab based franchise. “I don’t know him personally and you see a different version of him too, but generally when he’s on the ground, he has the calmness like MS Dhoni. There are good things too but the biggest thing is that you need to be a leader. People should be debating your decisions, ‘Why is he doing this or that?’. That never happens to him, even in an IPL team, because he has not taken any responsibility upon himself, letting others run the team,” Jadeja concluded.