'We aren't a team that's scared to try' - KL Rahul

Less than two minutes into his first press conference as India's ODI captain, KL Rahul was confronted with cold facts of his underwhelming captaincy record, asking how will he improve as a leader.

With an acknowledging smile, he offered a rather sarcastic response: "Thanks for the stats, gives me a lot of confidence."

Time and again through the 20-minute interaction, his glory moment was seized from him, and overshadowed by the mention of Virat Kohli - once in every four questions asked. Possibly aware of what awaited him, Rahul neatly responded to each of those queries even if it came at the cost of repetition.

The leadership role in South Africa is only a test of his long-time dream: if he can get away from the shadows of his highly-successful predecessors, if he can execute the long-term team plans on paper, and if he can put his self-designed captaincy philosophies to practice.

Yet, as the aura of his former captain weighed on him at the presser, and may even do so on the field, he will be as aware that it would only be teething issues of his budding captaincy career, The bigger goal though that he managed to lay out within that interaction was India's grand preparation plan for the 2023 World Cup, in which he is expected to play a key leadership role.

Even as he pressed on the idea that the new management wants to 'carry forward the process' and 'continue improving on what was being done' there is a core change that he stressed on: 'to not be scared of experimentation.'

"This year we will be playing a few one-day series, which will give us a chance to try out new things," Rahul said. "We've all sat down as a team and had an honest talk about the things we need to improve and the things that we need to get better at. Everyone is committed to it. We have some ideas, some plans. We want to try out those things in the coming series. That will give us an indication if we're doing it right, whether our strategies and tactics are right. We aren't a team that's scared to try. Our focus will be on the World Cup and getting the best XI on the park."

Rahul himself will be a guinea pig in that experimental lab, opening the innings alongside Shikhar Dhawan, in the absence of Rohit Sharma in South Africa. For long, India's batting concerns in ODIs were in the middle order, where Rahul had seamlessly fit in over the last two years - with the responsibility of consolidating in case of an early collapse as well as accelerating in the death overs. Since 2018, he has averaged 56.08, at a strike rate of 101.81 in 16 innings in the tricky No 4-5 spots - fairly ahead of the rest of the pack - to solve an issue that played a part in India's semifinal ouster in the