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Rahul's ton shows why he has cracked the Test code

Ahmedabad: Just after reaching his first home ton in 3,211 days, KL Rahul kissed the crest on his helmet, brushed back his mane of hair, raised his bat to the dressing room and put two fingers in his mouth, a dedication to his six-month old daughter. Celebrating landmarks has become a thing in Indian cricket. Not as swashbuckling as Ravindra Jadeja's sword twirl it may be, but Rahul loves improvising when he feels the time is right. Earlier, he would look to shut out the noise earlier by plugging his ears. But now that runs are flowing, Rahul has graduated beyond angry messaging. It has been a stop-start career, to be fair. He raised the bar with an early Test hundred in Australia at Sydney during the 2015 series; the knock became both a boon and a burden. Until he settled down in what is essentially the back half of his career, Rahul, 33, had plenty to complain about. His biggest gripe was that he didn't have a long rope or a settled number. It was largely disputed by the selectors, who felt he lacked consistency. One could argue, he could have played more than his 63 Tests over 11 years. But, perhaps belatedly, Rahul seems to have found a purple patch -- a 500-plus run series in England followed by a hundred in Ahmedabad to start the home season -- and his biggest calendar year in terms of runs (649). Given his natural ability to play close to the body and play inside the line, leave masterfully, a bumper series in England was waiting to happen. But this hundred is only his second at home and that tells a story. With no obvious shortcoming against spin, it's an anomaly of sorts. He would look good and comfortable in the middle before a sudden out-of-character dismissal. It's also emblematic of how his career has panned out. That's changing now... but why? "Not sure really," he told the broadcasters. "But the only thing that I've worked on in the last year or so has been maintaining my batting tempo. Just enjoying the phases that are not as exciting. For me, in my own head, obviously when you travel abroad and play in seaming, swinging conditions with extra bounce, there's a lot of challenge doing that. "And when we come back home, when there's three spinners playing and the field's spread out, you really need to dig in and need to get your runs with singles. The boundaries don't come that easily. So yeah, that's something that I've worked on. I needed to make that mental switch to enjoy grinding and getting 100s with singles and twos as well." Rahul's surge in scores in the second decade of his international career also tells all those watching that perseverance pays off. He's always tried to keep upskilling. His constant battles to reinvent his game in the other formats, whether it is raising his scoring tempo in T20 cricket or adjusting to the middle order in ODI cricket, may have challenged him to stay true to his red-ball technique, but it may also have strengthened his resolve to excel in a format he is the best at. A bit like Suryakumar Yadav, who discovered he could be truly world class in one particular format, quite late in his cricketing journey. KL Rahul may want to kick on in Test cricket. Even more, now that he knows, the India captaincy bus has whizzed away from reach. As a senior statesman of the team, runs are the only currency he will be judged by and what will help him leave an impact. Rahul got to his hundred in the first session on Day 2 itself, and was largely chanceless except for one let off when his outside edge off Jayden Seales went flying between the wicket keeper and a wide slip. A 288-minute long stay at the crease, laced with sweeps and reverse sweeps against spin, but risks taken only after he was well and truly in charge.

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