Widely regarded as one of the most consistent batters in the history of the Indian Premier League (IPL), Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) skipper KL Rahul made history on Wednesday.
While the Karnataka batter was not the main man behind LSG's super impressive display against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the DY Patil Stadium in Mumbai, he did cement his position as one of the giants of the IPL.
With his unbeaten knock of 68 off 51 balls that featured three boundaries and four sixes, Rahul became the first Indian batsman to accumulate 500 runs in five consecutive seasons of the IPL.
Rahul smashed 659 runs for his then-team Punjab Kings in 2018 and followed it up by collecting 593 runs the next year. In 2020, he made 670 runs, and last year he struck another 626 runs.
With his achievement, KL Rahul joined an elite group of batters to record 500 runs in five different seasons of the T20 competition.
Before him, only Virat Kohli, Shikhar Dhawan, and David Warner have achieved such a feat.
Kohli, who is only the player to reach the 6500-run mark in IPL, hit the milestone of 500 runs in a single season in 2011. He finished with 634 runs in 2013 before amassing 505 runs in 2015.
However, it was in 2016 that Kohli showed his full potential when he broke that was there to be breached in IPL, having raced to 973 runs with the help of a record four hundreds. In 2018, Kohli went past the 500-run mark yet again.
But Virat Kohli is experiencing a horror spell of form at the moment, having scored three golden ducks in this year's edition so far.
On the other hand, Shikhar Dhawan made 500 runs for the first time in 2012.
He needed four years to touch the magical number again in 2016 before eventually registering more than 500 runs in three successive seasons in 2019, 2020, and 2021.
Unlike Kohli, however, Dhawan is in prime form in the 2022 version too, and has already hit 421 runs with his bat.
Meanwhile, David Warner remains the only cricketer who has scored 500 runs in six different seasons of the IPL.
The Australian couldn't light up the tournament last year, but he is considered among the all-time IPL greats, having single-handedly delivered the trophy to his former team, Sunrisers Hyderabad in 2016.
Talking about his 500-run streak in IPL editions, it started in 2015 and ended in 2020 as he went on to produce 528, 562, 848, 641, 692, and 548 runs, respectively, during these six years.
Coming back to KL Rahul, he's on the verge of completing 4000 runs in the tournaments, having already smacked back-to-back hundreds against the Mumbai Indians (MI) this season.
Overall, he has 3810 runs to his name in the high-profile competition. He’s also the only player to score three hundreds against a single opposition in the IPL – a landmark he accomplished against Rohit Sharma’s MI in April.
KL Rahul has four IPL hundreds to boast of as well, with only Chris Gayle and Virat Kohli recording more centuries than him. While the explosive West Indian left-hander has reached the three-figure mark six times, Kohli has reached there on five occasions in the past.
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