When it comes to listing the most decorated players in the Indian Premier League, KL Rahul doesn’t spring immediately to the top of the list. The likes of Rohit Sharma, MS Dhoni, David Warner, AB de Villiers, Kieron Pollard and Suresh Raina tend to get precedence. But after 100 IPL matches, Rahul’s record tends to suggest his name should appear in the top bracket.
On Saturday afternoon against the Mumbai Indians, Rahul scored a blistering ton to set up a comprehensive 18 run victory. The century was KL Rahul’s third in the IPL and it pushed his average to 47.40. Amongst all the batsmen that have played 100 IPL matches, only Warner has managed to average over 40 (41.64).
Rahul’s golden run started when he shifted to the opening slot playing for Kings XI Punjab in 2018. In the last four seasons, he has scored 659, 670, 593 and 626 runs respectively. The other impressive part about Rahul’s batting is the 2548 runs amassed in the last four years have been scored at a strike-rate of 139. It is a further indication of Rahul’s pedigree as a T20 batsman.
Rahul, the batsman, deserves more accolades. He has been the primary run scorer for his respective franchises for numerous seasons and has rarely had a strong batting unit around him. Perhaps it is lack of IPL titles that separates him from the elite. But that is not his fault. He keeps churning out runs and continues to evolve his batting. The extra burden of captaincy has not weighed him down and he has relished the chance to lead from the front. It is testament to Rahul’s batting that a new franchise decided to back him as a leader and as the mainstay of the batting.
A couple of years ago, Rahul had stated, “I wouldn’t call my batting power-hitting, that’s something I honestly feel like I have not been able to do or not what I am blessed with.” Despite not having the brute power, Rahul has learnt the art of scoring briskly.
A lot of his shots are conventional and it is the extension of the hands through the ball that enables him to send the ball racing towards the boundary. Saturday afternoon was a perfect example of how Rahul has learnt to develop his batting to suit T20 cricket. The characteristic of Rahul’s batting was the way he converted the hittable balls to optimum effect.
Rahul was helped by the fact that Mumbai Indians didn’t decide to bowl Bumrah until the fourth over. It was a strange decision by Mumbai especially given Rahul had been dismissed for a golden duck twice this season. Handling part-timer Tilak Verma and Jaydev Unadkat proved to be perfect for Rahul to get his eye in. He got a short delivery from Verma and unleashed a pull for a four to start his innings.
The general pattern for Rahul’s innings is to get off to a blistering start and hit maximum number of boundaries in the power-play. On Saturday, he was starved of strike early in the innings, but still managed to hit 10 boundaries after the power play. It was another sign of evolution of Rahul’s T20 batting.
The hallmark of Rahul’s batting was the way he pummels spinners in the middle overs. Rahul is one of the few Indian batsmen that can play the slog sweep and hit the ball down the ground. Fabien Allen felt the full brunt of Rahul’s all round play as the West Indian spinner was smashed for 18 runs in the 15th over. T20 cricket is about picking the right moments and bowlers to maximising your returns. In two overs, Rahul scored 15 and 33 runs respectively. Those two overs changed the momentum of the innings and ensured Lucknow Super Giants posted a formidable total of 199.
In the latter stages of the innings Rahul used his hands to either glide the ball or power it over the ropes. Tymal Mills tried to limit the damage with ill-disguised slower balls, length balls and yorkers, but Rahul was quick enough to pick the variations and deposit the ball to the fence. A wide half-volley was carved behind point to bring up his century. It was Rahul’s most productive outing in the 2022 IPL season.
“I haven’t got the amount of runs that I’d have wanted. I haven’t got the team to the kind of start that I wanted and I wanted to cash in on this good pitch,” Rahul said in the post match conference.
It may have taken a few games for Rahul to find his groove in IPL 2022, but on the evidence of the past few seasons this could be yet another fruitful year for the Lucknow skipper. Perhaps a fifth season of domination will propel him into the elite category of IPL batsmen.
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