IPL 2025: Liberated Rahul unlocks the gear to get going
KL Rahul's commanding performance for Delhi Capitals highlights his return to form and freedom from captaincy pressure, showcasing his classic batting style.
New Delhi: Soon after he dispatched Yash Dayal into the stands to complete the chase for Delhi Capitals on Thursday night, KL Rahul took off his helmet, drew a circle by the side of the pitch, marked the territory with his bat, and seemed to say, “This is my ground.” Indeed.
It was as cinematic a gesture from Rahul — drawn from 2022 hit Kantara — as it was uncharacteristic, and yet it exemplified the simmering, steely determination with which the 32-year-old is approaching the current season.
In more ways than one, Rahul is a stylish misfit in modern T20s. His calm demeanour and predilection to play himself in before unfurling his range sticks out in an age where the likes of Abhishek Sharma and Nicholas Pooran love to seize the initiative with their six-hitting. But as Rahul showed the other night, there is still merit in the seemingly outdated concepts of shot selection and situational awareness.
After riding his luck early, Rahul reverted to his preferred classical style and played the situation to perfection. That’s not to suggest he batted himself into a shell — something he has been guilty of doing. When the drizzle arrived, Rahul, mindful of the par score should DRS come into play, upped the ante. On a slowing track where the next highest score across the two teams was 38, Rahul’s innings climaxed in the 15th over of DC innings when he pretty much put the chase to bed with a 22-run assault on Josh Hazlewood.
“Wicket-keeping gave me a feeler for how the other batters played and where were they dismissed. Got lucky with the dropped catch. This is my ground; this is my home. I know this better than anybody else,” he later explained.
This was the second successive match that Rahul had won for DC off his own blade after taking them home against CSK in Chennai earlier this month. It’s still early days in the tournament but if the encouraging start is an indicator, Rahul is primed for another productive season.
The batter has a penchant to divide opinions — while critics justifiably call out his middling strike rate, his fans point towards his class. Along the way, Rahul quietly keeps piling runs, match after match, season after season. Since 2018, Rahul has had a 500-run season every year barring 2023 — he missed the 2017 edition due to injury— and yet, few frontline Indian batters have had to endure the kind of scrutiny as him. Part of it was due to his strike-rate.
This season, Rahul seems to have found a method to deal with it. His 185 runs have come at a strike-rate of 169.72. After his match-winning 51-ball 77 against CSK last week, he spoke about rediscovering the fun of hitting the ball.
“I think somewhere along the way I lost that fun of hitting boundaries and hitting sixes. I wanted to take the game deep, deep, deep and that (approach) somehow stuck in my head,” he admitted in an interview with DC mentor Kevin Pietersen.
To be sure, Rahul was hardly ever a strokeless wonder, but the responsibility of captaincy appeared to weigh him down in his stints with Punjab Kings and Lucknow Super Giants. Far too often, he would delay the acceleration to the point that his efforts would ultimately end up being a self-serving exercise. In a weird way, Rahul’s rise on the run charts kept pushing his team down the leaderboard.
All that seemed to have changed for good.
With DC appointing Axar Patel their skipper and Faf du Plessis his deputy, Rahul has found the freedom to focus on his batting. He still remains a crucial cog in DC’s scheme of things as they chase their maiden title, but the sense of liberation is perceptible.
Not everyone seems to relish the demands of captaincy, as also evidenced by Gujarat Titans’ Jos Buttler. The former England skipper, who let go of the top job in the middle of this year’s Champions Trophy, admitted that the responsibility was bogging him down.
At the other end of the spectrum are players like Shreyas Iyer who seem to blossom with the added responsibility. Either way, Rahul’s intent and freedom, and the pre-season work put in with Abhishek Nayar seems to be bearing fruit.
“I’ve worked really hard on my white-ball game the last year or so. A big shout out to Abhishek Nayar. We’ve spent hours together talking about my white-ball game and how I can be better. Cricket has changed, and T20 cricket, especially, is only about hitting boundaries. The team that hits more boundaries and sixes ends up winning the game,” Rahul, who last played a T20I for India back in 2022, said.
