How KL Rahul became a victim of his own flexibility

Since 2018, nobody in the IPL has scored more runs than this guy. 4930 runs, 115 innings, Average of 50.82. Strike rate of 141. He’s the only one in the top 50 run-getters with a 50-plus average. And his strike rate? Better than Kohli. Better than Gill. Better than Iyer, Rohit, Gaikwad, de Kock, Miller. All of them.

Same bloke averages 52.74 in ODIs in same period. Not opening. Batting in the middle order. Number five, number six. Keeping wickets too. Managing DRS. The whole package.

Same bloke has 9 of his 11 Test centuries outside India. SENA. The places where Indian batters usually look like they’ve never held a bat before. He opens there. Faces the new ball. Makes hundreds.

And the same bloke is, hands down, the most trolled cricketer in the country.

Yeah. Makes total sense.

The IPL numbers that nobody wants to talk about

Let’s just look at the IPL first. That’s where all the shouting happens anyway.

Since 2018, Rahul has scored 4930 runs. In a format where even the legends average in the low 30s, this guy is sitting pretty at 50.82. That’s a man who shows up every season, every franchise, every situation, and just… scores.

But here’s the bit that really gets the critics. His strike rate is 141. Better than Kohli’s. Better than Rohit’s. Better than Gill’s, Iyer’s, Gaikwad’s, de Kock’s, Miller’s. All the names people throw around when they talk about great white-ball batters.
And Rahul, quietly, has been more efficient than every single one of them.

Top 50 run-getters in last 9 seasons. Massive room. And in that room, Rahul stands alone with a 50-plus average. Not because he’s the flashiest. Not because he hits the biggest sixes. But because he just… delivers.

Season after season. Franchise after franchise. Chaos everywhere around him, and he’s the one constant.

You’d think that kind of record would buy a man some peace. Some respect. Maybe a break from the memes. You’d be wrong.

The middle-order burden nobody asked for

Now shift to ODIs. This is where it gets even more ridiculous.

52.74 average since 2018. In the middle order. While keeping wickets. Let that sink in.

He’s not walking in at the top with fielders inside the circle and the luxury of time. He’s coming in at number five, sometimes six. The innings is half-dead or half-done. Spinners are operating with protection on the boundary. The death overs are coming like a train you can’t stop. And Rahul just… handles it.

Middle-order batting in ODIs is a different beast. Openers get the easy stuff. They get to set the tone, pick their moments, build their innings.

The middle-order guy gets pressure. Pure pressure. And Rahul has thrived there. 52.74 average. 91.3 strike rate. While keeping wickets. While managing reviews. While doing everything the captain asks.

The team management trusts him because he delivers. The fans? They find new ways to criticise him every single series. Every innings. Every shot he doesn’t play.

There’s a cruel joke here. Rahul is exactly the kind of player every team wants. Flexible. Reliable. Technically sound. Mentally tough. Does whatever job you give him. And yet, in the public imagination, he’s somehow the problem. Not the solution. The burden. Not the backbone.

Go figure.

The red-ball ghost who haunts SENA

If the IPL numbers are solid and the ODI numbers are staggering, the Test numbers are where Rahul becomes something else.

Nine of his eleven Test centuries have come outside India. Nine. In SENA. South Africa, England, New Zealand, Australia. Places where the ball moves, the pitches have grass, the cold gets in your bones and the bounce gets in your head. Places where Indian batters historically look like tourists who took a wrong turn.

Rahul hasn’t just survived there. He’s conquered them. Lord’s. Centurion. Melbourne. Southampton. Hundreds in all of them. He has faced the new ball against Anderson, Rabada, Hazlewood, and come out on top. Played innings that win Test matches in conditions where most batters are just trying to survive.

And he’s doing this while opening. The most exposed position in Test cricket. One bad ball, one unplayable delivery, one moment of misjudgement, and you’re walking back. Session after session, Rahul has stood there and built innings of real substance.

You’d think centuries in England and South Africa would earn a man some respect. You’d think being India’s best overseas opener in a generation would shut people up.

But this is KL Rahul we’re talking about. The doubters never sleep. They just find new material.

The troll’s favourite Target

So here’s the real question. Why this guy?

Why does a man with this resume, this mountain of evidence, get treated like some kind of fraud? Why does every failure become a national crisis while every success gets dismissed as “statpadding” or “selfish”?

Part of it is timing. Rahul’s career hit its stride right when social media became the main platform for cricket discourse. Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, WhatsApp. Everyone’s an expert. Everyone’s got a meme. And in that world, nuance dies fast.

A 66 off 107 in a World Cup final becomes the only innings that matters. Forget the hundreds before it. Forget the context, the pitch, the pressure. One innings defines you forever.

Part of it is aesthetics. Rahul is beautiful to watch when he is in form. That high elbow, that straight bat, that effortless timing. But beauty can be a curse in Indian cricket. The public loves grit. They love the Dhoni finish, the Kohli chase, the Pant six-hitting.

Rahul’s elegance can look like detachment. His calm can look like indifference. And in a country that wants its heroes to bleed for the cause, a man who makes it look easy can seem like he is not trying hard enough.

Part of it is franchise baggage. Punjab Kings. Lucknow Super Giants. Captaincy weighed on him. Teams around him were never quite good enough. And when things went wrong, the captain gets the blame.

The “statpadder” label stuck during those years. Even though the data said otherwise. Even though he was scoring more runs than almost anyone.

And part of it is just… cruelty. The internet isn’t kind to anyone, but it seems obsessed with KL Rahul. Maybe because he is too nice. Maybe because he’s successful. Maybe because he’s married to a Bollywood actress. Maybe because he once admitted on a podcast that the trolling got to him.

That he quit social media for over a year. That he stopped reading comments because they made him question himself.
The trolls smelled blood. And they haven’t stopped since.

The podcast confession and the weight of silence

There’s this moment from Nikhil Kamath’s podcast. Rahul sitting there, speaking softly, like he’s still figuring out how to say it out loud.

“If I sat, I got trolled. If I stood, I got trolled.”

That’s the absurdity of it. There’s no winning. No right answer. Every decision, every innings, every facial expression gets dissected and turned into a weapon. The man did everything was asked of him across formats. And he was sitting in a podcast studio explaining why he stopped using Instagram.

Fatherhood changed something. His kid was born in March 2025. He said cricket stopped feeling like the most important thing in the world. He realised the game would go on without him. And in that realisation, he found a strange kind of freedom.
Freedom to fail. Freedom to take risks. Freedom to stop caring what strangers on the internet thought.

That freedom is showing now. The strike rate is up. The intent is visible from ball one. He’s playing like a man who has nothing left to prove and everything left to give. And still, the memes come. Still, the trolling continues. But maybe, just maybe, he’s stopped looking.

What if the noise just stopped?

Here’s a thought. Imagine a world where KL Rahul wasn’t on social media. Where his every move wasn’t analysed by a million armchair experts. Where his failures were treated as human and his successes were celebrated as extraordinary.
In that world, what would we say about him?

We’d say he’s one of the greatest IPL batters of all time. We’d say he’s India’s most reliable middle-order ODI batter. We’d say he’s their best overseas Test opener of this century.

We’d say he’s done things most cricketers only dream of, across all three formats, while carrying the burden of keeping and captaincy at different points.

We’d say he’s a generational talent. A once-in-a-generation cricketer who adapted his game, his body, his mind to whatever the team needed. Opening in Tests. Anchoring in T20s. Finishing in ODIs. Keeping wickets. Leading sides. Taking abuse. Coming back. Scoring again.

But we don’t live in that world. We live in this one. And in this world, KL Rahul is the guy who keep scoring runs, and still got memed to death for it.

That’s not his failure. That’s ours.

The last word

There will come a day when KL Rahul stops playing. The numbers will be there for anyone who bothers to look
And somewhere, someone will still be typing a comment about how he was overrated. How he was selfish. How he never won India a big game.

That person will be wrong. They always were wrong. But they’ll never admit it.

Because that’s the internet. And that’s cricket in the age of noise. Where the quietest performers get the loudest criticism. Where the numbers speak for themselves, but nobody’s listening.

KL Rahul keeps batting anyway. That’s the only answer he’s ever known.