Ajinkya Rahane's IPL Record Across Six Franchises

Ajinkya Rahane has played for six Indian Premier League franchises, which is more than most players of his standing and a good deal more than any of his contemporaries in the India top order. He has been an opener, a No. 3, a finisher of sorts and a captain, and the version of him that turned up for Kolkata in the 2025 season bore only a partial resemblance to the one Rajasthan built an innings around a decade earlier. Both were productive. They were productive in almost opposite ways.

Mumbai, and two seasons that went nowhere

Rahane was on Mumbai Indians' books for the first years of the competition and made very little impression. In 2008 he batted twice for four runs. In 2009 he had seven innings and made 144, including two fifties and a highest score of 62, which was enough to suggest a player but not enough to secure a place in a batting order containing Sachin Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya. He did not register a batting innings in the 2010 season at all.

The move to Rajasthan Royals in 2011 is the single most consequential thing that happened to his franchise career. Rajasthan had a strategy of buying inexpensive Indian batters and giving them the top of the order, which was exactly what he needed and exactly what Mumbai could not offer.

The Rajasthan years, and the making of a top-order anchor

The first season at Rajasthan produced 120 runs from seven innings. The second produced 560. In 2012 Rahane batted sixteen times for an average of 40 and a strike rate of 129.3, made his first Twenty20 hundred with a score of 103, and hit 73 fours, which remains the most he has struck in a single campaign. That fours count is the clearest signal of the method: he scored heavily without ever really leaving the ground, taking the pace of the new ball and running it square on both sides.

2013 was the strangest of his Rajasthan seasons. He batted eighteen times, more than in any other year, and made 488 runs at a strike rate of 106.6. A hundred and six runs per hundred balls is a very slow rate even by the standards of that era, and it is worth noting that Rajasthan reached the playoffs anyway with him occupying twenty overs at the top. The 2014 numbers dipped to 339 at 116.5.

Then 2015, which by average is the best full season of his career: 540 runs from thirteen innings at 49.1, a strike rate of 130.8, four fifties and a highest score of 91. Rajasthan reached the playoffs again. It was the last season before the franchise's two-year suspension, and when Rahane came back to them in 2018 the side around him had been entirely rebuilt.

Two seasons at Pune

The suspension sent Rahane to Rising Pune Supergiant for 2016 and 2017. The first of those produced 480 runs from fourteen innings at 43.6, with six fifties — more half-centuries than he has made in any other season — and no hundred. That distribution says most of what needs saying about the role: get in, bat through, hand over at fifteen overs.

2017 was worse. He made 382 at an average of 25.5 in sixteen innings, in a side captained by Steve Smith that reached the final and lost it by one run. Rahane's own season contributed two fifties. It was the first indication that a strike rate in the high 110s was becoming a structural problem rather than a stylistic preference.

The captaincy at Rajasthan, and the slide

Back at Rajasthan for 2018, Rahane led the side and made 370 runs at 28.5 with a single fifty. The following year he made 393 at 137.9, his best strike rate to that point, including an unbeaten 105 that is still his highest score in the competition. He was replaced as captain partway through that season by Smith, which was not a comfortable episode and which effectively ended his time at the franchise.

What followed was the low point. Two seasons at Delhi Capitals produced 121 runs in total. In 2020 he batted eight times for 113 runs at an average of 14.1; Delhi reached the final and Rahane was dismissed cheaply in it, one of two early wickets that settled the match inside the first over of the 2020 season's decider. In 2021 he played one innings. A first season at Kolkata Knight Riders in 2022 brought 133 runs from seven innings at a strike rate of 103.9. At that point he was thirty-three, out of the India side, and out of the auction's list of first-choice batters.

Chennai, 2023, and the reinvention

The 2023 season is the hinge of the whole record. Chennai Super Kings picked him up cheaply, put him at No. 3, and told him to hit. He made 326 runs from eleven innings at a strike rate of 172.5, with sixteen sixes — more than he had struck in any previous season and nearly as many as in the whole of his Rajasthan career put together.

There is no obvious technical explanation for a batter adding fifty points to his strike rate at thirty-four. The likeliest account is the simplest one: he had spent fifteen years batting to a brief that valued occupation, and Chennai gave him a different brief. He was dismissed by Mohit Sharma in a final that finished at 1.35 in the morning, but the season ended with a title and with a recall to the India Test side for the World Test Championship final.

The follow-up in 2024 did not hold: 242 runs at 20.2 and a strike rate back down to 123.5, with no fifty in twelve innings.

Kolkata, and the captaincy at thirty-six

Kolkata bought him back for the 2025 season and made him captain. He made 390 runs from twelve innings at 35.5 and a strike rate of 147.7, with twenty sixes, which is the most he has hit in a season. In 2026 he batted fourteen times for 335 at 135.1 with eighteen more.

The late-career profile is genuinely different from the early one. In his first eleven seasons Rahane averaged around one six every three innings. Since 2023 the rate is closer to one and a half per innings. The fours have not increased; the sixes have. That is what a change of role looks like in the numbers, and it is a fair rebuke to anyone who assumed the method was fixed.

The full season-by-season record

Computed from ball-by-ball data. Six franchises, eighteen seasons with a batting innings.

Season	Team	Inns	Runs	Avg	SR	HS	50s
2008	Mumbai Indians	2	4	2.0	23.5	4	0
2009	Mumbai Indians	7	144	24.0	117.1	62	2
2011	Rajasthan Royals	7	120	20.0	122.4	52	1
2012	Rajasthan Royals	16	560	40.0	129.3	103	3
2013	Rajasthan Royals	18	488	34.9	106.6	68	4
2014	Rajasthan Royals	12	339	28.3	116.5	72	3
2015	Rajasthan Royals	13	540	49.1	130.8	91	4
2016	Rising Pune Supergiants	14	480	43.6	126.6	74	6
2017	Rising Pune Supergiant	16	382	25.5	118.3	60	2
2018	Rajasthan Royals	14	370	28.5	118.2	65	1
2019	Rajasthan Royals	13	393	32.8	137.9	105	1
2020	Delhi Capitals	8	113	14.1	105.6	60	1
2021	Delhi Capitals	1	8	8.0	100.0	8	0
2022	Kolkata Knight Riders	7	133	19.0	103.9	44	0
2023	Chennai Super Kings	11	326	32.6	172.5	71	2
2024	Chennai Super Kings	12	242	20.2	123.5	45	0
2025	Kolkata Knight Riders	12	390	35.5	147.7	61	3
2026	Kolkata Knight Riders	14	335	25.8	135.1	67	2
Total		197	5367	30.15	125.6	105*	35

Two hundreds, thirty-five fifties, 540 fours and 141 sixes across 212 matches.

What the record is worth

An average of 30 at a strike rate of 125 is, for a top-order batter in this competition, respectable rather than valuable. The comparison that matters is not with the tournament's leading scorers but with what a side gets for the money. Rahane has been bought at or near his base price several times and has produced 300-plus-run seasons from that outlay more often than not, which in the arithmetic of an auction is a strong return.

The other thing the aggregate obscures is durability. Only a small number of batters have played across the full span of the tournament, and fewer still have done it while changing role twice. MS Dhoni is one. Ajinkya Rahane is another, and he has done it while being released, traded and re-signed a total of five times. The 5,367 runs are the least interesting part of that.