Purple patch or genuine progress? Unpacking Kusal Mendis' record-breaking PSL season

Kusal Mendis has spent much of his career oscillating between promise and frustration, never quite settling into the stability expected of a senior international batter, particularly in T20 cricket.

PSL 2026 might just be changing that narrative.

Also read: Kusal Mendis is exceeding expectations by adding consistency to explosiveness

In just eight games so far, Mendis has lit up the Pakistan Super League in a manner no overseas batter has done before.

The Sri Lankan star has smashed 493 runs at an average of 70.42 and a strike rate of 172.37. To put this in perspective, the previous highest PSL season aggregate by an overseas batter was Rilee Rossouw’s 453 in 2023, while no player with 450 runs or more in a PSL season – domestic or overseas – has either averaged higher or scored quicker than Mendis.

Most runs in a PSL season

His eight innings so far have yielded a hundred and four other fifties, and no score below 20. This run builds on a promising start to the 2026 T20 World Cup, where he made three back-to-back half-centuries. While it was followed by a disappointing Super Eights stage, Mendis has well and truly recovered his initial T20 World Cup rhythm and turbo-charged it to take Peshawar Zalmi on an unprecedented winning streak.

The question, as ever, with Mendis is whether he has genuinely elevated his game to the next level or is this just a fleeting purple patch.

First things first, it’s important to take into consideration that the Pakistan Super League is one of the highest- and quickest-scoring T20 tournaments in the world after the IPL. The flat surfaces on offer allow batters to throw caution to the wind, naturally inflating batting outputs.

The 11 T20 games that Mendis played in Sri Lanka this year before the PSL saw batters average 20.08 and strike at 130.54. Those numbers in the eight PSL games he has played so far read 24.91 and 143. Mendis himself has improved his average from 33.6 to 70.42 and strike rate from 126.31 to 172.37 from Sri Lanka to Pakistan.

Along with the easier batting conditions, the presence of an in-form Babar Azam has also helped Mendis. The Pakistan stalwart has amassed 426 runs at 85.2 and a strike rate of 142.95, including making his first T20 hundred in two yearslast week. His solidity at one end has allowed Mendis to bat with the kind of freedom he rarely gets to experience in the Sri Lanka T20I lineup. The two have combined for three century partnerships in six innings together, one of which was a mammoth 191-run stand against Karachi Kings. For Sri Lanka, no pair has ever combined for more than two hundred-run stands, while Mendis himself has been involved in three with three different partners.

Kusal Mendis 🤝 Babar Azam

The only two batters with more than 400 runs in the ongoing PSL 💪 pic.twitter.com/Nt47tld3Gq

— Wisden (@WisdenCricket) April 20, 2026

Kusal Mendis' expanding range in PSL 2026

Beyond the external factors that have allowed Mendis to be at his best in the PSL, internally, he seems to have made some incremental additions to his game, while maximising his pre-existing strengths.

Mendis has always been a strong player of the short ball – both against pace and spin – and through the leg side. The pull, often off deliveries that aren’t short enough, the slog sweep, and the leg-side pick-up have been his go-to shots over the years. According to CricViz data, before PSL 2026, Mendis had hit 53 sixes off pull shots, 44 off slogs and slog sweeps, and 12 off picked-up flick shots in his T20 career. Straight-batted drives accounted for 21 recorded sixes off 532 shots, a rate of one six every 25 attempts. This rate has jumped up to one every 7.4 drives in PSL 2026, with nine such sixes coming off his bat so far.

Mendis is also stepping down the track more frequently against spinners. Before PSL 2026, he used his feet once every 28 balls against spin, with one out of every 3.67 such attempts going for sixes. Now, he is stepping out approximately once every 12 balls and sending the ball over the rope with almost every other such attempt.

While he has always been quick to swivel and pick anything up on the stump line over the mid-wicket to square-leg region irrespective of length, Mendis seems to be making a conscious effort to increase his range down the ground. More than 26 per cent of his runs in this PSL season have come in the ‘V’ so far, a far cry from just 10.4 per cent last year in the PSL, when he made 143 runs in five knocks.

If this is a method he can sustain beyond the PSL, it should, theoretically, reduce the risk that his cross-batted slogs bring and might just herald his evolution from a temperamental maverick to a more complete T20 batter.

Mendis is averaging 48.76 and striking at 150.18 in all T20 cricket this year – both personal bests for him in any calendar year. For now, the signs point to something more than just good form. The expansion of his scoring areas and the increased intent against spin suggest a batter trying to evolve. But conditions and team stability have helped. And at this stage, it would be premature to draw sweeping conclusions. Whether this version of him holds in the long run is what will define if this is just a purple patch or the point at which Kusal Mendis graduated to become the T20 batter he has always threatened to become.

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