What is a good strike rate?
It’s a tricky role, and RR clearly think Jurel is blessed with the attributes to be able to play it. And no one who has watched him bat at any level would deny this.
But is he ready for that role right now, in 2026?
Jadeja’s promotion, Parag said, was partly to have a left-right combination at the crease. But it was mostly about the entry point. “There [were] eight-nine overs to go, and we wanted to delay it [Ferreira’s entry point] a little bit and like just get a few [overs at] like eight-nine an over from the spinners, and then go from ball one when the seamers started to bowl.”
There’s something to be said about ensuring your best death-overs hitter is at the crease when the death overs begin, and Ferreira showed this with his unbeaten 14-ball 47. Only a handful of batters in the world possess the power and hitting technique that allowed Ferreira to clear the ropes off T Natarajan’s low full-tosses in the final over.
What was striking, however, was RR’s ambitions for the overs before Ferreira’s entry. Jadeja’s struggle to score quickly against spin are widely known, but from Parag’s words, it would seem RR weren’t even asking him to try.
It’s an outmoded way of constructing a T20 innings for a team batting first. Especially in the IPL, where chasing is such an advantage at most venues; to not contest an over or two at full intensity is to risk posting a below-par total. RR have discovered over their last two bat-first games that 228 and 225 can be below-par totals in 2026.
And if RR batted with muted ambitions when Jadeja was at the crease, they also did so through the 102-run partnership between Parag and Jurel.
The classic example came in the ninth over of the innings, which began with RR 71 for 2. They had lost Yashasvi Jaiswal and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi early, but the rebuilding this had entailed now seemed to be done. And RR seemed to acknowledge this when Parag hit Axar Patel for two towering sixes at the start of the ninth over.
RR had put Axar under tremendous pressure; this was a chance to force him into more errors and maximise this over. Instead, Parag and Jurel only attempted to rotate the strike off the last four balls, and ended up scoring two singles and two dots.
The next over, from Kuldeep Yadav, only produced six runs, and once more the intent from both ends was to work or punch the ball to deep fielders and collect ones or twos. This was a new bowler coming into the attack and settling down without being put under any pressure.
And if Parag stepped out of this bunker every now and then to try and force the pace, Jurel seemed happy playing second fiddle. This idea, again, is fast disappearing from the IPL. If you aren’t going hard from both ends – except in specific cases where one batter looks to get the other on strike against a specific match-up – you are leaving runs out in the middle.
It’s hard to say if it’s a question of intent or instruction, but Jurel has been batting this way through much of IPL 2026. Of all batters in the tournament who have faced 100-plus balls in the first ten overs, he has the third-worst strike rate behind Rishabh Pant and Ruturaj Gaikwad – who are both struggling – and the fourth-worst balls-per-boundary rate – Ajinkya Rahane, whose issues outside the powerplay are well-documented, sneaks above him here.
It’s no knock on Jurel’s raw ability or potential to say that he isn’t batting like an IPL No. 3 should in 2026. It’s certainly not beyond him to find that next level. The IPL is full of examples of top-order batters who didn’t quite meet the demands of the role initially but have now added several gears to their game: Shreyas Iyer, for example, or Devdutt Padikkal.
Or even KL Rahul, who this season has struck at 211.01 in the middle overs (seven to 16), after years and years of holding back in that phase to build up for a big finish. Even he doesn’t think that’s a good idea any more.
At two different moments on Friday night, however, RR showed they might still be holding on to an outmoded way of playing. It puts them in a funny place. They have honed some of the most exciting homegrown talent in the league – Jaiswal, Sooryavanshi, Parag and Jurel are all RR projects if not out-and-out RR products, and Sanju Samson spent all his formative years at the franchise – but their in-game thinking can sometimes feel worryingly behind the times.
Karthik Krishnaswamy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.espncricinfo.com ’
