KL Rahul was on 49 when debutant left-arm spinner Nangeyalia Kharote pitched one on middle and leg stump from over the wicket. Kharote had been getting good turn, so Rahul sensed an opportunity to play the cut shot. But extra bounce left him in an awkward position. He adjusted quickly, somehow still got on top of the bounce, and guided it past first slip for a single, bringing up his fifty.
That one delivery was a microcosm of Rahul's 165-ball 100 on the opening day of India's one-off Test against Afghanistan in New Chandigarh. There were challenges throughout, and Rahul was not at his fluent best, but he overcame everything to play a gritty knock. While Shubman Gill scored a free-flowing hundred later in the day and Rishabh Pant a breezy fifty, it was Rahul who had paved the way for them.
Between this Test and the IPL 2026 final, there was a break of only six days. But since Rahul's team, Delhi Capitals, didn't make it to the playoffs, he had an extra week to reset his sleep cycle and prepare mentally and technically for the rigours of red-ball cricket.
Afghanistan's three-pronged seam attack had a combined experience of three Tests, and was wayward at times. However, the pitch made batting difficult. Some deliveries were sticking in, some were keeping low. In the second over, bowled by Azmatullah Omarzai, Rahul left two deliveries outside off. Both bounced once more before reaching the wicketkeeper.
For someone who was playing T20 cricket for the last two months, Rahul showed great restraint, leaving the balls outside off and defending those that attacked the stumps. He had faced seven dots before flicking an over-pitched delivery from Ziaur Rahman through midwicket for four.
When the seamers bowled short of good length, Rahul tried to punch them off the back foot. But the slowness of the surface messed up his timing. At one point, he was on 5 off 26 balls.
"It wasn't coming on at all," Rahul said after stumps. "It was a really slow and low sort of wicket."
He had expected it to be like that. The practice pitches at the adjacent B ground were of similar nature, and his extensive net sessions there had prepared him for "some good old Test cricket".
Fortune favoured Rahul too. When he was on 16, he edged Ziaur behind the stumps, but neither the wicketkeeper nor the bowler was confident enough to ask the captain for a review.
Rahul didn't give another chance. When Kharoti came into the attack, he lofted him over mid-on and then came down the track to drill one straight. With left-arm spinner Sharafuddin Ashraf injuring himself in the field, Afghanistan were a bowler short. Rahul and B Sai Sudharsan took advantage of that and added 139 for the second wicket, with the latter contributing 81 off 104 balls.
From the outside, it appeared Sai Sudharsan played the aggressor role to ease pressure on Rahul. But he clarified it wasn't the case. In fact, it was Rahul who was helping him.
"We were not thinking about me taking a bigger role and him playing a secondary one," Sai Sudharsan said. "The conversation was more about understanding what was happening, how the wicket was behaving, and who was bowling what.
"Whenever I bat with KL bhai, he gives me so much composure and so much certainty. He reads the game very well. So he gives a lot of useful cues. Today the wicket was slow and low most of the time, and it was turning too. So the conversation was mostly around what options we could take."
The sapping heat only added to the challenge, with a temperature of 39°C feeling like 43°C in the middle. During the drinks break in the second session, Harsh Dubey and a support staff member made a canopy using a towel so that Rahul could lie down briefly in shade.
All the hard work paid off when he reached the hundred, his fourth in the last ten Tests.
"It was really hot, so there wasn't much time for me to feel happy or satisfied with the way I batted," he said. "I was just exhausted by the end of it."
That perhaps explains the uppish drive on the very next ball, which was caught by short extra cover. It was Rahul's third successive century to end on exactly 100. The previous two were against England at Lord's and against West Indies in Ahmedabad last year. Even on those occasions, he was out driving with hard hands, albeit against spinners. Among the batters with at least ten Test hundreds, Rahul now has the lowest century average (126.16).
It may feel nitpicky to bring this up this after such a fine knock, but with crucial World Test Championship matches ahead, even Rahul would acknowledge there is scope to take his game to an even higher level.