The new sounds of Rashid Khan

He's gone from predator to defender, but exactly where can his decline be seen? And can it be stopped?

There are two noises you hear a lot in T20 cricket. A loud appeal, or a celebration of the ball hitting the stumps. It happened for the Strikers, Afghanistan, Tridents, Victorians, Durban Heat, Gujarat Titans, Kabul Zwanan, Qalandars, Patriots, SRH, Sussex, Rockets and two MI franchises on separate continents. Those are just the ones that are easy to remember. Since 2016, Rashid Khan has been bowling in T20 cricket around the world, and hitting pads or stumps more than anyone else.

In the IPL, 48% of his wickets are bowled or lbw. The rest of the bowlers average 26%.

But the sound has stopped. Not only is Rashid Khan not hitting the actual stumps as much, he’s not even aiming the ball at them anywhere near as often.

If you look at his bowling to right-handers by year, in 2022 he was all about the top of the stumps, and sometimes a little fuller. In 2023 he had incredible control of his length, which is something very special. It shows his genius. The man at his best did not miss that year. By 2024 he’s not as great with line or length. He is still very accurate for a normal bowler, but not for Rashid Khan. In 2025 it just hasn’t been happening. There doesn’t appear to be a clear plan here. It looks more like a bowler just hoping he’ll come up with something great.

The noises of the ball hitting the stumps have been replaced with them hitting the stands. And it’s deafening.

I watched all of Rashid Khan’s balls from his first three matches on repeat thanks to NV Play, and made notes of every ball. I had videos of 57 of them. From those, I counted 12 down the legside of which two were full tosses and one was a half volley. Against the right-handers, they looked like mistakes. Against the lefties it was something else.

For the southpaws he’s doing it all the time at a rate he has never done before. It has to be a tactic, and a defensive one at that. It seems like he is trying to squeeze the lefties like you often see part time offies do to right-handers. Bowling behind their eyeline. And these aren’t wrong ’uns that are spinning back at the stumps, they are pitching outside leg and then spinning further away. That is an abnormal thing to do for a T20 killing machine.

In 2022 he almost never tried this tactic, preferring to attack offstump. The following year, he bowled a little straighter but it was still balls hitting the stumps. A similar story happened in 2024. For 2025 he’s hit the stumps twice to the goofy-footed batters. Either outside off, or way outside leg. It’s a small sample size, but the change is loud.

He is a different bowler than before. There is no doubt of that. From a predator, to a defender.

In my notes I had 12 of his balls down as overpitched. In the data it seems I might have been a little unfair. But this year still has more full balls than he’s had since 2022, a season in which he was noticeably trying to bowl fuller. But the important thing to note here, is that almost a quarter of his deliveries are seven meters or shorter. In fact, move it back a metre, and you see that this is the shortest he has bowled in recents years, and not by a little bit.

Almost 14% of his deliveries are not just short, but ‘short’ short. He is really struggling with his length in a way you just don’t see. This is a man who would land a ball on the offstump line, at about 5.3 metres, and either hit the top of off or leg on repeat. As a fast legspinner that was something incredible. Now his lines are changing, and his length is all over the place.

Just look at this graph again, he’s over 13% on both overpitched balls and short ones. Meaning that more than a quarter of his deliveries this year have been simply the wrong length. You could set your watch by his bowling before. Now it’s loud and messy.

His median length this year is not that short overall, but maybe that is brought down a lot from the fuller balls. But what you can see is that he has changed a lot, 40cm to be exact, from his mega 2022 year, where he did bowl way fuller.

This is not just against one kind of batter. He made the switch in 2023 to lefties and righties, and has more or less kept it up since then.

He is still really good in that year, taking 0.8 wickets more than expected per 24 balls. That is a huge clang for any bowler, especially one that teams often block out. But the following year that drops off a cliff, and he’s taking one entire wicket less per four overs. His economy stays about the same though. So in the space of a year he went from a great strike bowler to a defensive-only option hoping to silence batters.

If you just look at right handers, the pattern is more or less exactly the same. The true economy rates haven’t changed much, but the wickets have disappeared.

Rashid hasn’t always been striking better than other IPL leggies. There have been years where teams have defended him, due to which his average has gone up a little. But most years he’s around par or below. But then something really weird happens. In 2023 he takes all the wickets, and in 2024 he takes none. Again, it’s like the consistency has gone.

Economy is probably a better indicator of this. Rashid has never gone for more runs than other leggies. Only in 2023 – when he took all the wickets – did he get close. No one has ever been able to consistently hit him. But the last three seasons have clearly been the worst. And as of now, this is a terrible start to a season.

But this is the thing that has changed the most. His strike rate in the IPL vs other leagues. Every year it has not mattered what uniform he wore, or what kind of batters he was up against. He dismissed them all.

Last year in the IPL is the first divergence of that. And you could have called it a blip, if not for the fact that he’s been way worse this season so far.

Economy is usually a better way of looking at this, and you can see that until 2022, he’s been around the same marks for the IPL as other leagues, and then it changes. What happens that year? The Impact Sub.

So there are simply more runs in that league than others, but even so, his jump up does look very violent.

This may sound weird of a great T20 spinner, but Rashid doesn’t handle being attacked well. The reason for this is simple. For half of his career he hasn’t had to worry about it. People have defended him because it’s just a better way to go. There are anchor batters out there who hit more boundaries than what Rashid used to concede.

Now batters can swing with a longer lineup, and he’s going the distance.

If you just looked at the IPL numbers, you would say he’s a player who maybe has passed his best, or is handling an injury.

And remember, we started seeing some of the changes in his lengths and lines in 2023. Well, guess what year it was when he had to go off and have major back surgery.

It’s also worth noting that while he is listed at 26 years old, there is no way to ever test that. Ages aren’t recorded in Afghanistan in the same way as other countries. Not to mention that there was a lot going on in the Hindu Kush mountains during his early life and he has a huge family. It’s possible he’s five years older than the recorded number. I would assume that no one - including the man himself - would know his true age. But it is doubtful whether he’s 33 or older. Even if we consider him being five years older than stated, 31 shouldn’t be an age where a normal legspinner starts to struggle.

On the other hand, we have never seen a leggie put the amount of revolutions on his stock ball at Rashid’s speed before. And we’ve seen slower ball bowlers struggle with that kind of usage, like Pat Brown and Mustafizur Rahman (shoutout to the OG Bob Appleyard).

What about his usage? In the latest Kimappa podcast Robbie Uthappa says:

“I reckon someone who's considered the best legspinner in the world should be bowling your seventh or eighth over. I think he's coming on sometimes in the 10th over, sometimes as late as the 13th over. And it seems like they have moved in the direction of using him as a death bowler.

“You’ve got to bring your match-winners into the game when it's actually time for them to come into the game. You're bringing in a match-winner almost as a defensive option. And that has a huge impact on a person's mentality and psyche. And if that's foreign to this person, and I haven't spoken to Rashid. But it's just my observation that if that impacts the person and it impacts their confidence, then you could be the best bowler in the world, but you would still struggle.”

I don’t 100% agree with this, but Uthappa does make some good points. Rashid has been taken out of the powerplay a little, so far this year. And at the moment, he is bowling the most overs he ever has after the 12th. And he didn’t even finish his allocation one time. All this might be messing with his confidence and feel, but I think they moved him because he was already struggling. He’s no longer Gujarat’s first choice spinner.

So could this be the Impact Sub, usage, maybe his age, or perhaps injury? Chances are, it is all of them.

One bad sign is the sweeps. People didn’t really take the knee much – or well – to Rashid earlier in his career. It has become more of a thing to all bowlers. But this year it’s so notable that everyone is trying it against him. That is often a sign that a bowler is struggling with an injury, or age.

And it isn’t just the number, it is the scoring rate. In 2021, teams swept him a load, but they scored at 12 runs an over from it. Last season that went up to 16, and it’s been even higher this year.

When Brad Hogg was swept more, it ended his 83-year-long career. But that was a different time. So maybe this makes it less likely. But a couple of sweeps to a non sweepable bowler makes a sonic boom in their ears.

Impact is defined as how many runs a bowler changes the predicted final score by. How many runs you concede per ball and when you take your wickets. For example when you bowl, the predicted score is 180 and you take a wicket and the predicted score goes down to 175, your impact as a bowler is +5. If you concede a six and predicted goes up to 184 your impact as a bowler is -4. Negative impact is bad.

Rashid has never done this before.

It is really clear he is no longer the best spinner in the IPL, and with Sai Kishore’s form, maybe not even in his own team. Last year was the first we had on record as a subpar season for Rashid (and he hadn’t even been close before). This year is certainly looking like another.

Some of this is him being compared to himself. In two different stretches, he’s had a plus impact for 13 and 14 consecutive matches. He’s been a beast for years. But that monster has gone quiet. And aside from a little run in 2024, he’s at best a 50/50 chance to be good, and of recent times, he’s been way worse.

There have always been these nagging voices of people suggesting that Rashid Khan will be found out. As if he’s more of an illusionist than the miracle maker he was made out to be. Every World Cup failure, or ODI gone wrong, is used against him. But that is nonsense, because no one arses their way to seven great years on the trot in the toughest league in the world. Even more so as an overseas spinner.

In T20 cricket he is completely proven. There is no second conversation to be had.

But age is undefeated, and revolutions at pace slow the body down. Maybe he’s not being used optimally and the Impact Sub has changed the runs-per-over patterns we saw before.

Even great players lose their way a little. They play through an injury, and rarely get dropped because of bad form. So every issue is more glaring. Rashid Khan might be about to work something out and go on a tear.

He needs to, because the sound we’re hearing now is not of balls hitting stumps, it is questions as to why they aren’t.