KL Rahul

A lanky, elegant right-hand batter and also reliable with the gloves, KL Rahul is among the most highly rated opening batter in India's current set-up. Since his century in the Sydney Test of India’s tour to Australia in 2013-14, Kannur Lokesh Rahul has been touted as the next big thing of the evergreen Indian batting line-up. 

He has all the shots in his arsenal and does not have a notable weakness against either pacer or spinners. Ability to bat through the overs and hold the innings together. Or, hitting out the pacers over the top in remarkable fashion, Rahul has the class and the mindset to do it all in the cricket field.

After a series of poor performances in 2018, Rahul fell out of favour from the longest format of the game. But his stocks have been on the upward curve, perpetually ever since. 

After struggling to impeach either Shikhar Dhawan or Rohit Sharma, Rahul broke through into the lower middle order and did justice to his talents in the series against New Zealand at their home turf. 

A top-order batter playing well deep down the order as a finisher, shows the versatility of Rahul - the batsman.

Rahul set the record for the fastest batsman to have scored centuries in all three formats in just 20 innings, surpassing the record of Ahmed Shehzad, who took 76 innings. Arriving at the international scene in 2014, Rahul has come a long way. 

KLR, sadly, has lost his place in the Test side but is currently being looked as a vital cog in the limited-overs format. After displaying modest performance with the bat in the 2019 World Cup, Rahul reinvented himself, having performed exceptionally in the ODI and T20 series that followed thereafter. 

Rahul had successful league stints at Bangalore and Hyderabad before he joined Punjab Kings (then Kings XI Punjab) in 2018. In his first match for the team, he broke the league record for the fastest half-century by scoring 50 off just 14 balls. 

Before the IPL 2020, KXIP management revamped the team and roped in Anil Kumble as the head coach, along with asking KL Rahul to lead the side. Rahul won the Orange Cap as he led from the front, amassing 670 runs in 14 matches, but Punjab failed to qualify for the playoffs. 

Scoring over 500 runs in the five consecutive IPL seasons from 2018-22, Rahul has been in destructive form in the coveted tournament. Punjab Kings released him ahead of IPL 2022 and he got transferred to Lucknow Super Giants, captaining the franchise in the previous two editions.

Under his leadership, Lucknow reached the playoffs in 2022. They again played The Eliminator in 2023 but Rahul got ruled out midway through the tournament due to an injury. 

In between, he played two T20 World Cups but received massive backlash as his performance did not match the expected standards.

He also got dropped from the Test team in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2023.

Rahul’s comeback story began right before the ODI World Cup 2023. He returned from the injury break in the Asia Cup 2023, straightaway notching up a century against Pakistan.

He scored 452 runs in 10 innings in the 50-over World Cup, dishing out valuable match-winning knocks. He recorded the fastest hundred by an Indian batter in 62 balls in the history of the ODI World Cup against the Netherlands. He top-scored for India with 107-ball 66 in a losing-cause in the final versus Australia.

Soon after, he made his Test comeback as a wicketkeeper-batter. In his first innings of the South Africa tour, he piled up a blistering ton.

Despite his immense promise, Rahul has shown a worrying tendency to get out early. This is evidenced by the fact that he scored two centuries in his first five Tests, but got to double figures only once apart from those innings. 

Also, an excellent close-in fielder and more than a handy wicketkeeper, Rahul is definitely a long-term prospect for India if he can sort out his inconsistencies. 

The Karnataka cricketer failed to make the cut for the T20 World Cup 2024 as the selectors opted for Rishabh Pant and Sanju Samson for the role of wicketkeeper-batter. With openers almost certain in the national team, Rahul had the chance to show his prowess in the middle-order in the IPL, but he decided to open and made things difficult for himself.

(As of May 2024)