Earlier this week, ESPNCricinfo ranked Rashid Khan at No. 1 in their list of the Greatest T20 Players. An accompanying write-up said: “Rashid takes wickets and he takes them quickly. He is the leading wicket-taker of all time in the format now, with a strike rate under 17 balls per wicket, and he concedes fewer than seven runs an over doing so. Given how batter-dominant the format is, these are miracle numbers.”
The problem for Gujarat Titans (GT) was that those numbers seem to belong in the past. As they gaze at the wreckage of what had promised to be another stellar season, here’s an astonishing statistic for you. GT’s top three of Sai Sudharsan (759 runs), Shubman Gill (650) and Jos Buttler (538) aggregated 1,947 runs between them, only 48 less than the entire Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) squad.
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On the bowling front, Prasidh Krishna leads the Purple Cap race with 25 wickets. Sai Kishore took 19 wickets and Mohammed Siraj 16, though both were expensive, conceding 9.24 runs an over. And Rashid? You have to scroll down the list quite a while to get to his name, in 39th place. Just 9 wickets in 15 outings and an economy rate of 9.34.
Before 2024, Rashid’s worst IPL campaigns in terms of wickets were in 2017, when he made his debut, and 2019. Both years, he took 17 wickets, and each time, the economy rate was miserly, well under 7. In fact, 2023 was the first time he went at over 7, but an economy rate of 8.24 (still perfectly respectable) was offset by a stunning haul of 27 wickets.
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Since then, the wheels have come off. Batters didn’t take him to the cleaners in 2024, as an economy rate of 8.40 will tell you, but a return of just 10 wickets in 12 matches suggested opponents were no longer as befuddled as they once were. He started this season being slapped around like a part-timer, and though he managed to stem the flow of runs a fair bit in the second half of the tournament, two wickets in the last six matches – including the Eliminator against Mumbai Indians (MI) – tells its own story.
Rashid doesn’t turn 27 until September, but aside from his commitments for Afghanistan, he has now played a staggering 477 T20s in various leagues around the world. He gets little time to get over niggles, and the physical toll has shown in recent performances. The hissing-cobra zip off the pitch simply isn’t there.
It’s unthinkable that GT would consider letting him go on the back of one bad season. But for Rashid, this IPL season has been a huge wake-up call. It’s time to step back, take some deep breaths and reset. No. 1 player in history or not, he risks burning out if he doesn’t.
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