Can KL Rahul Close The Gap Of Average And Potential?

KL Rahul is universally acknowledged as a gifted and technically gifted batsman, but his career has been beset by inconsistency in terms of taking his hundreds to actually big scores. Regardless of consistently scoring to three figures, the question remains: can he bridge the gap between his potential and actual performance?

KL Rahul’s Century Stats: A Frustrating Pattern

KL Rahul’s recent centuries have all followed a frustrating script, with three of his last four centuries getting edged out at precisely 100 or 101. This includes his latest centuries at Lord’s and Ahmedabad, where he got to 100 on both occasions, but failed to push on further.

At Lord’s, he was dismissed after an unusually loose drive against Shoaib Bashir, and at Ahmedabad, he also fell after a loose shot against Jomel Warrican. Although his technical batting appears to have no visible weaknesses, these premature dismissals have led many to question why Rahul can’t manage to turn these beginnings into larger scores.

The Century Average: A telling gauge of KL Rahul’s inconsistent development

KL Rahul’s Test cricket career is distinguished by a record of its own kind his century average. Having scored 11 Test centuries, his century average is 128.54. It is the worst century average among the 18 Indians who have scored more than a decade of Test hundreds, and one of the lowest in the world among the 146 batsmen who have scored more than a decade of centuries.

The below century average is in big part attributed to the reality that KL Rahul has not been able to get more significant centuries, with merely two among his hundreds exceeding the 150-run mark.

All this while, he has only once reached the 150-run mark in a Test match since 2016. This is one of the larger voids in his career Rahul has lots of good innings but has not been able to convert them into the “big hundreds” that keep a batsman’s average up.

Key Factors Contributing to KL Rahul’s Test Average

There are a number of reasons for Rahul’s relatively modest career average of 36.00, despite his exceptional talent. The Position of Opener: As an opener, Rahul often finds himself negotiating a difficult situation at the beginning of his innings, and therefore finds it harder to score not out hundreds. Yet many of the other openers have had the same type of difficult condition and have subsequently gone on to make big hundreds.

“Wobbly Form Phases: Between 2018-2019, Rahul did not go through the best period of technique and decision-making off-stump. The wobbly nature was hard to disassociate from the demands of transitioning between T20 and Test formats and taking the next step.”

Performing on Bowler-Friendly Pitches: Most of Rahul’s career has come on bowler-friendly pitches, where runs were hardly scored at all. On top of that, several of the Tests he has played, India’s top-order has batted on flat surfaces and deprived him of the opportunity to chase his runs.

Dropped from the Team at Vital Junctures: Following dismal performances in the 2019 West Indies tour, Rahul was dropped for India’s next series against South Africa and Bangladesh. Rohit Sharma and Mayank Agarwal during this time both had a golden run of form with them, scoring scores of hundreds, including double hundreds, which put Rahul’s career on hold.

The 2025 Season: KL Rahul’s Ability to Get Over the Lack of Consistency

2025 has been a bright year for KL Rahul with a cumulative average of 49.92. It has been his second-best year in Tests, behind only his career-best year of 2016 when he averaged 59.88. His performances in 2025 indicate that he is in good nick with no weak area in his cricket.

Rahul has been flawless from a technical point of view, having put in long innings with a bat, in which he has not been dismissed by any deliveries that he shouldn’t have been out by. Yet, with all that, his career profile still trails behind the careers of other prominent Indian players.

For example, Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara each had three seasons with 500+ runs at more than 60 averages, and other batsmen, such as Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane, matched that accomplishment too.

Rishabh Pant and Shubman Gill will accomplish that back in 2025, and it will be in this segment of his career that Rahul’s inability to find this performance standard stands out as one of the biggest mysteries of his career.