T Natarajan: The Death-Over Specialist is Back
Sanju Samson hitting a shot on the way to his fifty against SRH (Twitter)
T Natarajan, created a lot of buzz in the 2020 season of the IPL with his superb death bowling. That performance eventually got him into the Indian team as well and there too, Natarajan impressed one and all with his superb death-bowling skills.
However, after a bright start he has been laid low by a string of injuries and somehow it felt that India and IPL have lost a promising talent. However, SRH kept faith in the pacer and now in the opening game of SRH in IPL 2023, T Natarajan once again showed his vast variety of death bowling skills and made a big impact, making everyone sit up and notice that he still has the goods to perform at the highest level.
Interestingly, his first over went for 17 runs when Natarajan bowled his opening over in the fifth over of the game. The man though showed his class in the death as he gave away just 6 runs in next 12 balls with a big wicket of Sanju Samson. What makes this a great effort is that he bowled those superb two overs when Rajasthan Royals were going great guns and showed his class in the 17th and 19th over - Two of the most difficult overs to bowl in T20 cricket.
Rajasthan Royals eventually managed to get 203 on the board but they were looking good for a lot more as they were 122 for 1 at the halfway mark. Their top-3 batters, Jos Buttler, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Sanju Samson all got fifties but Sunrisers Hyderabad bowled brilliantly at the death led by T Natarajan and gave away just 43 runs with two wickets, pulling things back nicely.
It is still a good score on the board from RR and SRH need to start off brightly to chase it down against a quality Rajasthan Royals bowling attack.
Brief Scorers: RR - Sanju Samson - 55 (32), Jos Buttler - 54 (22)
SRH - T Natarajan -23/2, Fazalhaq Farooqi - 41/2
 "Aashay Chopade")
