KL Rahul and the chasm between his numbers and his ceiling though there’s no apparent weakness in his test game.
Can KL Rahul close gap between his stats and his ceiling?
There are precisely 100 in Ahmedabad and 100 at Lord’s.
An uncharacteristically loose and untimely drive against Jomel Warrican, as well as an uncommonly loose drive against Shoaib Bashir.
The other aspects of cricket tragedy and farce that defined the Lord’s 100 were absent from the Ahmedabad 100. KL Rahul did not contribute to a partner’s exhaustion. The game did not change because of his dismissal.
However, the scorecard showed the same number. 100. His career total increased by the same number of runs.
Rahul has finished at 100 or 101 in three of his previous four Test hundreds. No one should hold that score against him because he was last man out when he scored 101 at Centurion. But the dismissals at Lord’s and Ahmedabad may have made you howl in agony if you’re one of the increasing number of well-wishers who hope his batting average would rise to a level that at least somewhat reflects his brilliance and Test-match achievements.
Furthermore, it could not be merely a chance occurrence. Rahul has now amassed 11 Test hundreds, and his average, or what we’ll refer to as his century average, is 128.54 over those 11 innings. Of the 18 Indian batsmen who have amassed at least ten Test hundreds, this is the worst century average. Among the 146 batsmen who have scored ten Test hundreds worldwide and throughout cricket’s history, it is the third-worst.
Rahul seldom scores unbeaten hundreds as an opener, so there are other elements that affect the century average, but nothing inflates that number like big hundreds. One of the main reasons Rahul has a lifetime average of 36.00 despite playing a lot of excellent and outstanding innings around the world is that he doesn’t have many. He has only topped 150 twice, both times in 2016.
He has six Test hundreds as an opener in Australia, England, and South Africa—Sunil Gavaskar is the only Asian opener with more—as well as one as a middle-order batsman, in case you need reminding.
Naturally, there are additional factors that contribute to Rahul’s average being what it is and is not. Possibly as a result of attempting to be too many things at once—an unrestrained attacker in T20 cricket and a Test opener in difficult conditions—he had a terrible run in 2018 and 2019 during which his off-stump technique and judgement collapsed.
For instance, Rahul was fired following the 2019 West Indies trip. Mayank Agarwal and Rohit Sharma, who opened for the first time in Test cricket, amassed six hundreds, including three doubles, in five Test matches over India’s following two series, which were played at home against South Africa and Bangladesh.
Following a poor run that included two Test matches against Australia on dustbowls in Nagpur and Delhi, Rahul was then dropped in 2023. He was replaced for the next two Test matches by Shubman Gill, who took just 22 wickets in the five days on a highway in Ahmedabad and another dustbowl in Indore. In the Test, Gill scored a hundred.
He did, of course. When given the opportunity, the best Test batsmen have always filled their boots. Rahul hasn’t really displayed that ravenous desire to maximise the good times during his career, despite what his century average would indicate. Or as his 2025 average thus far indicates. His average has been 49.92, and he is having an amazing year.
It’s frustrating because Rahul has appeared technically perfect for the majority of this season, displaying no signs of even a slight weakness that a bowler could try to exploit. Hours and hours had passed since a ball that didn’t deserve to beat him beat him. In addition to being cautious, he has been aware of scoring opportunities. Still, 49.92. In Test cricket, it’s his second-best season. 2016 was his finest year, with an average of 59.88.
When you consider that Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara each had three seasons with 500+ runs at 60+ averages, that seems fairly excellent. Ajinkya Rahane and Rohit Sharma each completed a 500–600 year. By the end of the year, Rishabh Pant, Gill, and Ravindra Jadeja will have done it twice, once, and once, respectively, assuming their 2025 averages don’t go below 60.
Rahul’s career is among the most intriguing of his time because of the discrepancy between his performance and the high ceiling he has always shown. However, that disparity also represents the leap he has yet to make—from a batter of enormous and established talent to a run-scorer with ravenous appetite. At 33, is he able to make the leap?