Mentor for Delhi Capitals, Kevin Pietersen is impressed with KL Rahul’s evolved batting approach in IPL 2025 and believes that the star wicketkeeper-batter deserves a return to the Indian T20 squad as well.
“I’d bat KL at four for India in T20 cricket, I think you guys have got plenty of opening batters, you’ve got Surya who bats at the top, you’ve got all of these guys but the way that KL Rahul is playing cricket now, he would be my first choice to bat at four and keep wicket for India,” Pietersen said.
Earlier in the season, KL Rahul had said in an interview with IPLT20 that he needed to return to his free style of his early IPL days.
“I think somewhere along the way I lost that fun of hitting boundaries and hitting sixes. I wanted to take the game deep, deep, deep and that somehow stuck in my head. But now I have realised I need to go back… cricket’s changed, and T20 cricket, especially, is only about hitting boundaries. The team that hits more boundaries and sixes ends up winning the game,” he shared.
However, KL Rahul’s IPL career took off in 2016 when he played for Royal Challengers Bengaluru, scoring 397 runs at an average of 44.11 and a strike rate of 146.49. After missing the 2017 season due to injury, he scored 500-plus in five seasons, four of which exceeded 600 too as well. Meanwhile, he also led Punjab Kings and Lucknow Super Giants in between. He was also dropped from the Indian T20I setup following their semifinal exit in the 2022 World Cup.
“KL has been playing in a very positive manner since late last year, mid to late last year. We saw how he finished off a couple of the games for India and almost sealed the deal in the Champions Trophy in Dubai. I’ve had a lot of incredibly brilliant conversations with him about batting, a lot of deep and meaningful conversations because when you grow up as a youngster like he did and you get taught defence, elbow up, play in the V and then all of a sudden in your thirties you’ve got to change it and you’ve got to become a different kind of player for a different format which is evolving all the time,” he said.
“It’s very, very difficult. So the way that he has accepted that he’s needed to change, the way that he has changed is of great, great credit to the person that he is. He is so positive, the way that he practices, the way that he trains, the way he thinks about the game and also the way that he talks about the game. That’s KL,” Pietersen further added.
However, Pietersen also opened up about the new generation of batters and their aggressive approach to cricket as well.
“I think a lot of these players are not going to play Test match cricket. So you’re probably looking at it as a view, and I do often as well, I look at it and I just think like this is just crazy, some of the shots that you see and and how quickly these guys play the shots, it looks like utter madness but that’s the form of the game,” Kevin Pietersen added.
“On wickets like we’re playing on this evening (DC vs RCB game), you can’t play that way and you’ve got to be methodical, you’ve got to find rhythm, Virat [Kohli] found rhythm this evening, KL got rhythm and I think that’s where you see the true batter, the real batter that can come out there and sort of monitor the situation and it looks effortless because they’ve built a technique for 20 years, 30 years, whereas you give the absolute belters and that’s when the next generation can come in and do all sorts of things,” Kevin Pietersen concluded.
