Rashid Khan Opens Up on Back Injury Recovery and GT’s Middle-Order Woes

The Titans' sensational fielding and containment with the ball, spearheaded by a three-fer from left-arm pacer Arshad Khan and two wickets each from Rashid Khan and Jason Holder, restricted a dangerous RCB batting line-up to just 155. While GT struggled with their middle-order yet again in the run-chase, allowing RCB to make a healthy contest out of a modest chase, the sensational ball striking from skipper Shubman Gill and Jos Buttler in the powerplay acted as a cushion for the Titans, who are now in fifth place in the points table, with five wins in nine games and 10 points.

Rashid has been facing back problems for a while, having undergone surgery post-2023 ICC Cricket World Cup in India and returning to international cricket in March 2024. The injury has restricted the ace spinner to just limited-overs cricket, with his last Test being against Afghanistan in January last year, where he bowled 50-odd overs.

For the past two IPL seasons, Rashid struggled for consistency, as his wicket-taking magic declined. Across the 2024 and 2025 seasons, he took just 19 wickets in 27 matches, and the strategy against him was either to play him out safely or totally brutalise him with boundaries and sixes. But this season, he has shown some spark, with 10 wickets in nine matches at an average of 27.40 and best figures of 3/17. This also includes his tidy 2/19 spell in four overs last night, during which he removed Tim David and Devdutt Padikkal.

Speaking on 'Match Centre Live' on JioHotstar, Rashid opened up about not doing the right kind of work on his fitness after the injury and rehab did not go as planned, since he had a short time to get back to the field and had to feature in Test matches, which he called a "mistake".

"It was a back injury and, given the energy I bowl with in my action and run-up, I needed to work consistently on my fitness after that injury, which, to be honest, I did not do. My rehab did not go as well as it should have. I only had about two to two-and-a-half months to get back on the field and, since those were Afghanistan matches, I had to play. The second big mistake I made was playing a Test match, where I bowled around 67 overs, after which I felt the injury again. So, after the IPL last year, I wanted to give myself and my body more time to recover properly, complete my rehab, and regain the energy and intensity that I bowl with. It is all going well now and, hopefully, it continues," said Rashid.

On his performance against RCB, Rashid highlighted the importance of bowling in the right areas and maintaining a good economy rate, especially in the middle-overs phase, where RCB has taken off against pace and spin alike heavily throughout the tournament.

"Whenever I conceded runs, it was because I had bowled bad balls. So, that was on my mind. If I could minimise the percentage of those as much as possible, it would benefit me. My focus was to consistently hit the 5 to 5.5-metre length, which really helped me," he said. Rashid was also honest on GT's middle-order issue, with batters like Washington Sundar, Shahrukh Khan, Rahul Tewatia etc not getting a lot of runs, saying that in a competition like the IPL, every team has a certain weakness and focusing only on that will put the batting line-up in trouble and remove their focus from the big prize.

"In a competition like the IPL, every team will have a weakness in some department, whether it is bowling, the middle order, or the top order. We try, as much as possible, not to focus on that. Whoever gets the responsibility in the middle, including myself, should aim to score 15-20 runs if I have five to 10 balls to play," he said.

"That is extremely important because if we keep thinking that our middle order is weak or that the top order failing will put us in trouble, we lose our focus. If you look at some other teams in the competition, they do not have a bowling line-up of the calibre that we do. So, our focus is to restrict the opposition batters to low scores and make things easier for our batters," he added.

- ANI