The two debutants of IPL 2022, Gujarat Titans (GL) and Lucknow Super Giants (LSG), faced off against each other in Match 4, and the fans were treated to a last-over thriller. The match saw some great performances, but two players stood out with their momentum-changing batting performances. Here are who they were.
Superstars of the Match
Ayush Badoni:
On his IPL debut, the 22-year old Ayush Badoni came out to bat when his team was in deep trouble at 29 for the loss of four wickets. The order of the day at this stage was to stay calm, rotate the strike and crawl back into the match.
In a pressure-cooker like situation, against the likes of in-rhythm Mohammad Shami and Lockie Furguson, the youngster was middling the ball from the very start but couldn’t pierce the gaps.
However, Badoni kept his calm and played second fiddle to Deepak Hooda at the beginning of the innings. However, once he got an idea of the conditions and the opponent bowlers, he went hard after them and helped his team to a respectable position.
Badoni flaunted some spellbinding strokes in this knock, including slog sweeps, pull shots, and lofted drives. During the show, he dismantled Ferguson, Rashid Khan and Hardik Pandya.
Let’s look at how he built his innings:
Fig: Runs per 10 balls
The graph shows that Badoni was looking to rotate the strike and stay calm in the first half of his innings, and after he got settled, he went berserk. Let’s take a look at his strike rates.
Fig: Strike rates per 10 balls
For the first ten balls, Badoni had a strike rate of just 30 which climbed to 80 from balls 11-20. But in the next 10 balls, he got his strike rate jumped up to 240. The level of maturity he showed to fight out when the going was tough and then launching at the bowlers when he got settled, makes him one of our ‘Superstars of the Match’.
Rahul Tewatia:
In the second innings, Gujarat were chasing a target of 159 runs, which appeared to be a moderate one. But they lost wickets and suddenly, it looked like GL were losing the plot.
Rahul Tewatia walked in to bat with the score reading 78 for 4 in the 12th over. The required run rate at this stage was 10 runs per over. But this did not affect Tewatia. He kept his calm and built his knock slowly. When it was looking like they are leaving too much for the end, Tewatia shifted gears and then pulled off a ‘Tewatia’ (A popular stunt that Sheldon Cottrell could never forget).
Let us look at his innings progress:
Fig: Runs per 10 balls
The bar graph clarifies that Tewatia kept his cool when it was most needed. He did not get overawed by the situation, trusted his abilities, and took the match deep. The southpaw went behind the spinners (Ravi Bishnoi and Deepak Hooda) to smash them for three boundaries and two maximums before tonking two more fours against Dushmantha Chameera Avesh Khan - all majorly in the on-side.
Let’s look at his strike rate progress.
Fig: Strike Rate per 10 balls
Rahul Tewatia decided to shift gear when the required run rate was 13.6 runs over. After settling down with a strike rate of just 60 in the first 10 balls, he took it to 260 in the successive 10 balls and changed the course of the game. Being in the ‘Imposter’ category, it was the day he fired and won our ‘Superstar of the Match’ award.