IPL 2022 | KL Rahul heroics a timely reward for fans’ undying love

KL Rahul’s scores prior to the April 16 contest against the Mumbai Indians were 24 and nought.

Earlier than that, he’d collected another duck and had scored a 40 in the games before. 

But after April 16, whatever KL Rahul ends up scoring would likely draw comparisons with what he did to the Mumbai Indians in the twenty-sixth match of the Indian Premier League.

If the Rohit Sharma-led side were already sinking in despair, then thanks to Rahul’s 103, they’re currently at the bottom of the ocean. 

However, Mumbai’s tormentor is at the top of the world. 

In scoring only the second century of the ongoing IPL, Rahul has done exactly what his milestone reaching celebrations warrant: cut through the noise and focus within. 

Unless one didn’t care to dive within, how’d the goods be produced?

The goods that make cricket ever so lovely, the IPL a fantastic hangout zone for fans and the contest, a one-sided affair where the bat is destined to dominate the ball. 

He scored his century off just 56 and ended up unbeaten on 103 off just 60 deliveries at the end, which is precisely ten overs. 

But Rahul’s marauding ton should ideally be measured in its impact. 

Forget not; he batted half the team’s share of overs. How’s that for an impact? 

You know someone has scored well if the batter reaches a three-figure mark in a T20, but you know something significant has transpired if that very batter constitutes the lion’s share of runs for his side. 

Of his team’s 199 (for 4), Rahul conjured 103 on his own. 

66 of those 103 came only by virtue of blazing hits that either translated into a four or six. 

In making those great runs, he executed fourteen hits to the fence.

Why’d Rohit even entertain the idea of Mills bowling at Rahul was the key talking point, a question Mumbai Indians shouldn’t refrain from attempting now that they have time. 

The question Rahul had great answers for so that the fans could be entertained. 

For, after all, that is what we come to seek from those two and a half thumping hours of a T20, right, where the willow smashes the leather out of its smithereens!

That they bowled too short didn’t help Mumbai’s cause, for this collection of T20 megastars was subdued by Lucknow Super Giants: the captain who batted like a nawab. 

Wristy as ever and, along with it, powerful at anything bowled into his zone or outside the off. 

That was KL Rahul, whose initials perhaps ideally suggest the murderous mood in which he operated: akin to a killer! 

Even someone as wily and clever as Fabian Allen wasn’t spared. His four overs going for forty-six. The stroke where Rahul swept the Jamaican behind square for a six was perhaps the crowning highlight to an innings of perfect annihilation. 

What was, of course, a fitting reward for the occasion was that the Lucknow Super Giants’ captain notched up a hundred whilst playing his hundredth IPL game.