“Had a full-fledged tear, my tendon ripped apart from my quadriceps” - KL Rahul opens up on thigh injury during IPL 2023

KL Rahul has opened up on the thigh injury he suffered during the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 while captaining Lucknow Super Giants (LSG). The right-handed batter explained that he was chasing a ball when his tendon snapped and he suffered a full-fledged tear.

Rahul has been out of action since suffering the thigh injury during the IPL 2023 match between LSG and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in Lucknow on May 1. He was set to make a comeback for the Asia Cup but suffered another niggle during the rehabilitation process.

In a video on bcci.tv, Rahul recalled how he picked up the injury and why surgery was unavoidable.

“Obviously, it’s quite painful but it’s also quite simple. I just tried to chase a ball and my tendon snapped. I had a full-fledged tear, my tendon ripped apart from my quadriceps. So when it happened, me, my family, the franchise, the team, everybody had their fingers crossed, hoping that wasn’t a big tear. But once we did the scans in a couple of days, we knew it was a full tear," he explained.

"It was quite clear that in terms of how I can get better from this injury was to go under the knife and do surgery,” Rahul added.

Rahul underwent thigh surgery in May, just a few days after he suffered the injury, and subsequently began his rehabilitation at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru.

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“You’ve had a big repair” - Rahul on giving the body enough time to recover

Sharing his thoughts on the recovery process, Rahul stated that he was aware of the fact that he needed to give the body enough time to recover.

“When you have a surgery, the most important thing is for you to have to respect that you put your body through something very big; you’ve had a big repair, so you have to respect it and give your body enough time to recover. I think skills, for me at least, I knew that I only needed a few weeks to get back in touch," he said.

The 31-year-old further added that he needed to be absolutely sure of his body being able to handle the rigors of batting and keeping in ODI cricket.

“The big thing was to feel confident in my own body and be pain free in movements that require a lot of intensity. Especially, coming back, I knew I’ll have to keep wickets as well and that was one of the big concerns for physios and me, a big question mark in my head that the biggest challenge for me coming back will be wicket-keeping because of the quadricep injury,” he added.

The Karnataka cricketer added that he was fighting a mental battle and concluded that the biggest challenge for him was to get rid of fear and that pain aspect of things.