5 min readHyderabadAug 13, 2026 01:16 PM IST
First published on: Aug 12, 2026 at 08:43 PM IST
KL Rahul returns to Sri Lanka as one of the batting pillars of his side, a man for tough conditions, and already one of India’s most successful Test openers. Yet, the two-Test tour offers Rahul a shot at ticking a box that has remained unticked in his career — to define a series with consistently big hundreds and stretch his average to a bandwidth that aligns with his true potential.
Rahul’s career as an opener and his impact can’t be truly measured in numbers. As most openers would vouch for, the last decade – especially in SENA countries – has been exceptionally harrowing for their ilk. His average of 38.13 (when opening) is not middling when compared with some of his contemporaries. It is an impressive 42 in the last five years. The retired Sri Lankan stonewaller Dimuth Karunaratne averaged 39.83; Tom Latham 39.18; Kraigg Brathwaite 32.58 and Ben Duckett 38.13.
An exception, perhaps, is Usman Khawaja, who averaged 48.05 over the last 10 years, even though his numbers fall dramatically when playing in England (36.78) and New Zealand (22), where facing the new ball is the most perilous exercise in the game. In this span, Rahul stacked hundreds on devilish tracks in England and South Africa.
India’s KL Rahul celebrates after scoring a century on the second day of the first Test cricket match between India and West Indies at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, India, Friday, Oct. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)
Yet, he would feel aghast at himself for both squandering his starts as well as not kicking on to make daddy hundreds after reaching three figures. Three of his last hundreds ended at exactly 100; of his 12 centuries, only twice has he crossed 150, and six times perished between 100 and 110. It’s the trademark of all great openers to convert their starts into something substantial. Rahul’s century average (the mean figure of all his hundreds) is 128.45, significantly lower than Brathwaite (149.81) and Latham (152.62), not to mention some of the greats such as Virender Sehwag (175.71) and Graeme Smith (152.62).
Lapse in focus
Only Rahul could tell whether it is a case of him losing concentration, or feeling tired. Perhaps, it could be both. “Mentally, you have to be very, very strong,” former opener Wasim Jaffer tells The Indian Express. “You need to be physically fit as well to bat for long hours, to concentrate for a long period of time.”
In some instances, Rahul perished trying to release the pent-up pressure by playing a loose stroke. After completing his most recent hundred, against Afghanistan, he attempted an expansive drive to a widish full ball, a case of him hitting the ball too hard. Likewise, the ball after he had wrapped up an attritional hundred at Lord’s the year before, he lost his discretion and drove hard (again) at a flighted ball from off-spinner Shoaib Bashir.
He could be emotionally drained too, Paddy Upton, who once worked with the Indian team as mental conditioning and strategic leadership coach, had said.
“Players today arrive at Test cricket with their mental and emotional fuel tanks on load. Meaning: It is like your cell phone battery is at 25 percent. You cannot run a cellphone battery all day; it must be fully charged to last the whole day,” Upton had told The Indian Express.
“The same applies to batters who need to bat the whole day; they need to have their mental and emotional battery fully charged. But because of cricket, travel, and T20 cricket, they arrive with low batteries. So they don’t have that calm focus to maintain accuracy for long periods.”
KL Rahul of India during Day 2 of the warm-up match between Sri Lanka XI and India at the NCC Ground, Colombo, Sri Lanka, on August 8, 2026. (CREIMAS)
It has been a pattern in Rahul’s domestic career, where he has just one score of 200 or more (a triple hundred in a Ranji Trophy final against Uttar Pradesh).
“The time that India is playing T20s, he can use for his Test cricket practice, giving him a mental rest and also more time to prepare for Test cricket,” Jaffer suggests.
Another hindering factor is his tendency to start a tour with a hundred and then taper off as the series progresses. “He gets one score in the series. And then somewhere, I feel he relaxes a little bit mentally,” the former India opener says.
But the last trip to England offers hope. He was consistent throughout, stacking 532 runs at 53.20, his highest tally ever in a series. By his own admission, Rahul is not fussed about his average. “I don’t let it bother me but it’s not that I don’t see it. Any batter would want their numbers to be as high as it can be,” he told JioHotstar.
“But right now, it’s more important for me to make sure my gameplans are tight and that I am enjoying my cricket. Those are the boxes I want to tick more than thinking about numbers.”
More than the average, the metric of posterity would judge him. Rahul would want to define a series and rack up the big hundreds that could put him in the company of the elite.s
KL Rahul in action. (FILE photo) 
India’s KL Rahul celebrates after scoring a century on the second day of the first Test cricket match between India and West Indies at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, India, Friday, Oct. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)
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