Leg and Off: What's ailing Rashid Khan in IPL 2025?

Gujarat Titans (GT) spinner Rashid Khan is battling a poor run of form, something that he is not quite used to. Being one of the consistent spinners in the world, the Afghanistan ace is yet to turn up in the 2025 Indian Premier League (IPL) season.

He began his season with figures of 1/48 in GT's loss to the Punjab Kings (PBKS) at home. After a decent two-over spell against the Mumbai Indians (MI), he conceded 54 runs off four overs against the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) at the Chinnaswamy Stadium recently.

The wrist-spinner was mercilessly hit for five sixes by Liam Livignstone during his spell. Interestingly, the England all-rounder had a dreadful record against Rashid Khan coming into the contest, which leads one to believe what the other in-form batters are capable of in the coming games.

On that note, let us take a look at some of the factors that are responsible for Rashid Khan's spiralling downfall to something downright ordinary from someone world-class and generational.

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#1 Fallout from the back injury

For someone who plays cricket round the year, whether it be for franchise or country, Rashid Khan has been out of the circuit for quite a while. After enjoying his career in cruise control for the majority of the time, the leg spinner faced a setback in the form of a back injury after the 2023 ODI World Cup, which required surgery.

While he played the 2024 IPL and the 2024 T20 World Cup after making a quick recovery, his zing was more or less gone. Despite that injury being a thing of the past, he has never been the same bowler since. Now, whether he rushed his recovery or the injury was severe enough to affect his bowling is something that cannot be determined, but the not-so-promising results in the aftermath are there to be seen.

Rashid Khan had his most prolific IPL season in 2023, picking up 27 wickets in GT's run to the final. After just playing five T20s until the next season, a phase during where he withdrew from the SA20, the BBL, and The Hundred, the spinner endured his worst-ever IPL campaign in 2024. He took only 10 wickets in 13 matches at an economy of 8.40, marking his lowest wicket tally and highest economy rate for a season.

He did have a prolific T20 World Cup campaign, with the surfaces largely tailor-made for his bowling style. He was in the frame during the 2024 MLC, The Hundred, and the winning SA20 campaign. In short, he's had several decent campaigns, but nothing close to his usual brilliance and the standard that he has set over the years.

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#2 Too much cricket has nullified the mystery element altogether

Being largely a T20 specialist player, and devoid of a jam-packed international schedule, Rashid Khan's appeal to the T20 franchise league is more than just his skill. The ace player has also been open to such exposure and has not hesitated when it comes to participation.

As of now, Rashid Khan plies his trade for the MI Cape Town, Gujarat Titans, MI Emirates, MI New York, and Trent Rockets (soon to be for the MI Invincibles). He has not played for the Adelaide Strikers since 2022. He also used to play in the Bangladesh Premier League and the Caribbean Premier League before the franchise model really took off to a whole other level.

Although young on paper at 26 years, Rashid has had a T20 career spanning over a decade, which largely includes constantly shuffling from one league to another and having international duty in between. He has played 464 T20 matches since 2015, ranking him ninth in the all-time appearance list. The remaining names on the list are either retired players like Dwayne Bravo, or veterans like David Miller, making Rashid's presence stick out.

Modern batters are not familiar with the concept of respecting the bowler, since conditions and the new-age approach of freedom and intent allowing them to do so. Add to the fact that batters have now faced Rashid year in year out across every possible surface. This makes Rashid Khan's sudden ineffectiveness not a bizarre occurrence, but something that was a long time coming.

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#3 Poor execution

The most obvious factor as to why Rashid Khan's IPL 2025 campaign is not going well is simply because he is just not bowling good enough. He would have had some defense in his favor if all the other spinners were struggling, but that is not the case.

Just when Rashid Khan was bowling arguably one of the worst spells of his career, Sai Kishore was bowling elegantly from the other end. The same has been the case for GT's earlier matches in the IPL 2025 as well.

Rashid Khan's turn did not make him a threat, nor was it his biggest strength. His accuracy and the fact that the batters found it tough to read his variations were the attributes that made him the bowler that he is now.

Whether it be the long-term consequence and impact of the injuries, fatigue, or the fact that he is trying something out, Rashid just has not been able to hit the ideal length as often as he used to before.

By going shorter than usual, the batters have been able to use Rashid's pace against him to rock back and hit the ball. Whereas going fuller with the same speed, without any flight or dip, have allowed batters to play through the line or bring in the sweep shot.

Rashid was never a bowler who used pace variation as a major tool to construct an over to set up the batter or yield wickets. He banked on his variations and a little bit of a bite from the surface to do the work for him. But, now with conditions more in favor for the batter, and also his variations being largely readable, the good balls in his spell have drastically reduced. This is why he needs to vary the pace because it is one tool that is not overly dependable on an external factor.

Several of his peers have varied the pace throughout their over to keep the batter guessing. But Rashid has stuck with the same old formula of bowling fast and flat.

"All 24 deliveries from Rashid were north of 90 kph with an average speed of 94.68 kph while Sai Kishore varied it from 83.70 to 97.90 with his average speed reading 88.88 kph," as mentioned in Cricbuzz.

Ironically, the man with countless variations and maneuvers to outfox batters has become a one-trick pony. A lot of spinners do look helpless on overtly batting-friendly pitches, but Rashid's plight is, unfortunately, not entirely down to the conditions.

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#4 Rashid Khan has lost a lot of his effectiveness in his effort to be a more attacking bowler

A constant opinion that emerged after Rashid Khan's prowess became evident was the fact that batters would try to see out his spell, and not give him any wickets. The pundits had issued a challenge to try to incorporate more wickets with a similar economy rate.

The introduction of the Impact Player's rule has meant that batters are not interested in survival during Rashid Khan's overs. Instead, even he is not being spared. Although it has led to an increase in his economy rate, he was also able to get wickets more frequently.

But if there are wicket-taking options at the other end, there is nothing wrong with Rashid Khan being a defensive bowler. If he can target the stumps, keep things tight, and put pressure on the batters, then that is a job good done. In his active search for wickets, which includes varying his lengths unnecessarily to force the batter to take him on, he has lost his ability to control proceedings.