In his second Test match of his career, the Karnataka batsman went on to hit a century at the Sydney Cricket Ground. He made his debut in the shorter format of the game in Zimbabwe and to everyone’s surprise, scored a ton in his first ODI outing at the Harare Sports Club. When KL Rahul came in to bat at the Central Broward Regional Park in USA, he started taking on the bowlers and kept the scoreboard ticking. The way he was timing the ball and making it clear the ropes, it seemed like a T20I century was around the corner. KL Rahul went on to score his maiden T20 International ton in 46 balls and stayed unbeaten on 110, a knock that was studded with 12 fours and 5 sixes. We at BCCI.TV spoke to the young gun and found out more about the chase, partnership with Rohit Sharma and inputs from Captain MS Dhoni Excerpts: A century in each format of the game. Not a bad start for a young career. Not a bad start for me at all. I just hope to carry on from and here and go from strength to strength. It is very disappointing to be on the losing side but what’s good to see is that we did not give up half way through. The West Indies had put up a big total for us to chase and what we spoke in the dressing room was to try to take the game as long as we could and the way everyone came and approached this innings was very good to see. You had something special in store for Sunil Narine. Tell us about your thoughts while taking him on . It was just one of those days when whatever you thought the bowler was going to do, he just ended up doing that and I guess that doesn’t come too often in a batsmen’s life. It was one of those days and I was hitting the ball sweetly and was moving well. I just wanted to make sure that I stay there and bat for 20 overs and I knew if I batted till the end, I could make a game out of this. Happy with the approach, but disappointed with the result. This was for the first time you batted alongside Rohit Sharma in a T20 International game. Tell us about the first conversation you guys had when you met in the middle today. The partnership between Rohit and me was very crucial. We tried to keep it simple and did not want to complicate things. We knew it was a big target to chase and as soon as I went in, I started hitting from ball one or ball two. We played our cricketing shots, then see where we end up at the half way mark and by around the tenth over we felt like we were on par with the Windies score and we had a lot of batting power to come after us. We tried to play our shots and attack the bowlers that we felt we could go after. I think everybody batted really well. You have long idolised MS Dhoni. Tell us how was it batting alongside him in such a run chase. As soon as he came in, I knew that he will make me run a lot. I was already tired by the time he came, but he kept on pushing me and like I said we just kept things simple out there in the middle. We required 13 runs an over. He said that even if we get 11-12 runs till the sixteenth over, it was ok and we could go big in the last couple of overs. We were favouring one end and hit sixes on that side and we knew that they did not have overs left from their main bowlers in the death. That was the plan and we just kept hitting well, kept connecting. We got 11-12 runs easily in an over. Just unfortunate it was one of those days when the game could’ve gone anywhere.