Ruturaj Gaikwad has started IPL 2026 with scores of 6, 28, 7 and 15, and has a strike rate of 103.70. Till Chennai Super Kings (CSK) beat Delhi Capitals (DC) on Saturday night, his form was a mirror of the team he leads. It must be a concern for him, the team management, and the fans, and Wasim Jaffer feels Gaikwad must be willing to be less conservative and “take a lot more risk”, while Aaron Finch says the problem is with the “mindset”, and Gaikwad must think: “how can I impact this game in the best possible way as quick as I can?”.

“He’s somebody who wants to score big. You know, being an opener, I don’t think you need to look at [trying to get] 80 or 100 from the outset. I think you need to look at giving a terrific start, the kind of start the openers want,” Jaffer said on ESPNcricinfo’s TimeOut show. “He’s not somebody who is going at a 200-plus strike rate. If he’s asked to push the scoring rate, I think he needs to take a lot more risk. He’s got the game. He’s got hundreds in the IPL. But he just, I feel, holds himself [back].”

Gaikwad missed much of IPL 2025 with an injury, forcing MS Dhoni to return as captain after having handed over the reins. At the last Syed Mushtaq Ali (T20) Trophy, he played just one game for Maharashtra before being picked in the India ODI team to play South Africa at home, and made a solid 105 in the second ODI, though in a losing cause. He has since played List A and first-class cricket for Maharashtra, but no representative T20 cricket for a while before the start of the IPL.

“It’s okay to have a player like that in your side, like Shubman Gill, if he’s batting with somebody who is a bit of a cowboy at the other end, somebody who’s striking at 200-plus,” Finch said. “If he goes on to get 60s and 70s and sets up the middle order or bats with a middle order where he can control [the innings] if need be, he gets off strike and gets somebody on strike who can really take them on… But he’s doing neither. He’s not getting off to a flyer and he’s not getting big enough scores to have a significant impact on games.”

“You have to be in the right mindset to be able to play like that because you have to remember, probably for 25 years, his game and his focus has been so narrow on bulk runs, ‘get runs, runs, runs’. You have to change your mindset to impact: what is the biggest impact I can have on this game, and how can I impact this game in the best possible way as quick as I can? The kids who have grown up playing T20 cricket from their introduction to cricket, they’ve got the ability to just say, ‘you know what, whatever happens, happens; I’m just going to take them on’. Whereas other guys, they’ve been told every day, ‘get hundreds, get hundreds, get hundreds, get multiple runs’. So that’s purely a mindset shift.”

Gaikwad has been a part of CSK since IPL 2020, and while he has got big runs – he has topped 400 in three seasons and has two centuries – his strike rate for a season hasn’t crossed 150 except in 2025, but then he played just five games that year.

“I just feel that, he plays with that tunnel vision of scoring big. We’ve seen [Virat] Kohli do that: change his game. He’s a different Kohli to what we saw at the start of his career,” Jaffer said. “I am sure Ruturaj can do it [but] he needs to put the impact [first], not think about bulk of runs.”