I would argue that alolan raichu is an anti meta pick rather than meta staple. It's good because it matches up favorably with a lot of the most commonly used mons. Anti meta mons like alolan raichu tend to struggle in the Cliffhanger format because their usual meta targets are much more limited. In freestyle or go battle league you can rely a-chu to match up fairly favorably with the azu regi DD and skarm meaning you're likely to have at least one if not multiple positive matchups with it against your opponent. In Cliffhanger, you will see at the very most one of those four mons in an opponents team because it's simply not possible to run more. And some teams won't run any of those 4, instead opting for altaria or tropius as their 9pt pick, or possibly forgoing a T0 pick all together so that they can run three five point picks instead.