Indian star KL Rahul has opened up about the bullying he faced on social media and also revealed how he dealt with it. The right-handed batsman has been a regular in the Indian team for almost a decade but has struggled to maintain consistency in international cricket.

In the past, KL Rahul has time and again faced harsh criticism from fans and pundits. Even though he has performed consistently well in the IPL, he has faced criticism for his strike rate in the shortest format of the game. It is one of the main reasons why he was not included in India’s squad for this year’s T20 World Cup, even though he performed excellently in the ODI World Cup last year.

KL Rahul’s inconsistent performance with the bat also led to former India pace bowler Venkatesh Prasad publicly questioning his place in the team. Prasad had taken to X (formerly Twitter) last year to criticise the Indian team management for picking the struggling batsman in the playing XI.

While players are not new to facing criticism, more often than not, criticism is replaced by trolling. And Rahul found himself on the receiving end a couple of years ago.

In a recent podcast, the star batsman said that while he was good at handling trolling, he found it difficult to deal with the situation a couple of years ago.

Rahul recalled being attacked for almost everything he did. Rahul said that while he still uses social media, he tries to spend as little time on it as possible.

“I used to be good with [handling] “I didn’t care, but I feel like I was a lot younger back then. And then a couple of years ago, I was exposed to a lot of trolling. If I sat down, I was trolled, if I stood up, I was trolled,” Rahul said on Nikhil Kamath’s podcast.

“I’m done with trolling. For the last year and a half, I’ve completely quit Instagram. I’m still posting, doing my thing, and getting out of that place as quickly as possible,” she added.

KL Rahul falls down the pecking order:

While KL Rahul remains one of India’s top batsmen, he has definitely fallen down the pecking order, especially in Tests and T20Is. He was recently replaced as vice-captain of the ODI team by Shubman Gill.

He has not played a T20I since the 2022 T20 World Cup and is unlikely to get a call-up anytime soon as the likes of Rishabh Pant, Sanju Samson and even Dhruv Jurel are ahead of him.

In Test matches, his last appearance was in the first Test match of the five-match series against England earlier this year. However, Rahul remains an important member of the ODI squad and was part of the squad for the tour of Sri Lanka earlier this month.