KL Rahul’s IPL 2026 campaign got off to the worst possible start twice. Mohammed Shami dismissed him for a golden duck off the very first ball of his debut for Lucknow Super Giants, with Rahul driving hard at an outswinger and edging straight to Mohsin Khan at third man. Then, four days later, against the Mumbai Indians, Deepak Chahar struck on the fourth ball of the innings, drawing an edge off a full delivery that swung down the leg side, and Rahul departed for just one run. Back-to-back failures at the top of Delhi Capitals’ order have, predictably, sent social media into overdrive, but the truth demands a closer look at the bigger picture.

For a batsman of Rahul’s calibre, two cheap dismissals in two matches are really just a rough patch against quality bowling. In his debut season for Delhi Capitals in IPL 2025, Rahul was the team’s leading run-scorer, amassing 539 runs at an average of 53.90 and a strike rate of 149.72, including a match-winning, unbeaten 112 against the Gujarat Titans. On top of that, looking at his IPL career across 143 matches, Rahul has scored 5,176 runs, hitting the 5,000-run milestone in fewer innings than legends like Virat Kohli, David Warner, and Rohit Sharma. You don’t just stumble onto numbers like those; they are the result of years of high-pressure excellence.

IPL 2026: KL Rahul is struggling in the first two matches

Yet the noise surrounding Rahul has never been purely about the volume of runs. Critics have long questioned whether his anchor-style batting still works in the modern T20 game, where even middle-order players aim to strike at 160+, and batting through 14 overs at a 130 strike rate just isn’t as valuable as it used to be. That argument might sound fair in a vacuum, but it ignores the fact that Rahul spent most of 2025 actively changing it.

Former India all-rounder Irfan Pathan noted that in the LSG vs DC clash, Rahul’s approach showed he was ready to attack from ball one, and Pathan predicted that Rahul would score big if he kept that mindset throughout the season. Seen that way, the dismissal looks less like a loss of form and more like the risk that comes with aggressive intent.

Rahul’s early wicket did trigger a top-order collapse, leaving Delhi at 26/4 inside the Powerplay, yet the team still won the match comfortably, driven by an unbeaten 70 from Sameer Rizvi and a 117-run fifth-wicket partnership between Rizvi and Tristan Stubbs. That victory proves that Rahul’s dismissal isn’t a death sentence for Delhi’s campaign, and it shows that DC has built enough depth to handle an early setback. Delhi’s 2026 squad was built to pair Rahul’s stability with the finishing power of David Miller and Tristan Stubbs, specifically so the openers don’t have to carry the entire run-rate burden early on.

The real question isn’t whether two low scores mean he’s finished, but whether a batsman turning 34 this April can keep evolving his game. His track record says he can. As recently as the 2025 England tour, Rahul scored 137 at Headingley and 55 at Edgbaston, both in the second innings under serious pressure. A player who can perform like that in Test cricket against a swinging ball in England hasn’t suddenly lost his touch. Two early IPL dismissals, one to a world-class outswinger from Shami and another to a thin edge off Chahar, say more about the bowling than about any deep flaw in Rahul’s batting. The season has only just started.