Saturday night in Ahmedabad felt oddly familiar. Gujarat Titans, who have built their short IPL history around squeezing sides with the ball, finally watched their two headline acts do the job side-by-side. Kagiso Rabada hurled down 2 for 33 from three overs; Rashid Khan, looking more like the bloke who terrified batting orders five years ago, helped himself to 4 for 33. Six for 66 between them and, if we are honest, Rajasthan Royals were cooked long before the formalities ended.
Those numbers matter. Rabada now leads the Purple Cap race with 18 wickets; Rashid has moved past Lasith Malinga into the tournament’s all-time top ten. More than numbers, though, it was the manner – speeds for Rabada, stumps-shattering accuracy for Rashid – that had former players purring.
“Let’s see the [Shubham] Dubey wicket, [bowled] from over the wicket [to a left-hand batter]. If he gets the ball to turn from outside off stump or off stump and hitting middle or off, that’s a really good delivery,” Deep Dasgupta told ESPNcricinfo’s TimeOut. “It was the old, vintage Rashid today… three bowled, one leg before… a very high percentage of those deliveries were hitting the stumps.”
The Afghan leg-spinner endured two lean IPL campaigns – ten wickets at 8.40 in 2024, nine at 9.35 last year – the second complicated by a rushed return from back surgery. Fit again, he has 15 victims in 11 innings this season, conceding just a shade over eight an over. Dasgupta’s summary was blunt: “The moment he starts bowling over the wicket to a left-hander and his leg-spin deliveries are hitting the stumps, he becomes very dangerous.”
If Rashid’s resurgence was overdue, Rabada’s surge has arrived after a long, honest look in the mirror. Over the previous three seasons the South African quick managed 20 wickets in 21 matches, leaking runs at more than ten an over twice. Mitchell McClenaghan, who spent pre-season time with him, explained why the new Rabada feels, well, new.
“He’s come to the point where he realises that his T20 game, particularly in the IPL, hasn’t been where he would like it,” McClenaghan said. “I think he sees this tournament as a privilege and wanted to make sure that he was as prepared as he possibly could be by the time he got to this tournament… a lot of effort in terms of getting a sprint coach, who trains one of the best sprinters in South Africa, and working with him on conditioning. And this is probably the best condition I’ve seen KG Rabada in.”
The benefit is obvious: pace genuinely up, cross-seam hits the pitch harder, yorkers skid. “He’s getting the fruits of the work that he’s put in, because he’s bowling rapid,” McClenaghan continued. “At the start of the tournament, we were saying who is it out of Jofra Archer and KG Rabada, who’s top of the tree in terms of the out-and-out quicks? I think KG has pushed past [Archer] tonight.”
For Titans supporters the pleasing part is simplicity itself. They no longer need one superstar spell to paper over cracks; they now have a pair hunting together. Batting depth remains a talking point, and the middle-order still looks one injury away from anxiety, but when Rabada and Rashid share a mood like this, Hardik Pandya (who captained for an injured Shubman Gill) can afford the odd batting misfire.
Cricket being cricket, form flickers. Surfaces tire, bodies ache, opponents plan. Yet on a warm May evening both marquee bowlers found their groove, and that is more than half the battle in a season that still has a good fortnight left to run.
