Buckle Up Your Seat-belts, The Shardul Thakur Show Has Only Just Begun!
Shardul Thakur (AP News)
The odds regarding some familiar names in the Indian Premier League are quite simple. You’re Killer Miller David Miller, if the ball that’s bowled in the “v”, is sent to the tree. You’re Sky and the one who’s known to send the ball rows back under the skies if you are bowled anything from the cover point to the square leg region. You’re Faf if you straight away get into the act and begin to score for your side without much ado. You’re Andre Russell if you hit sixes that are longer the duration of an IPL inning.
But you can be no one else, but Shardul Thakur if you manage to score a match winning fifty despite having arrived well after the halfway stage of an inning.
Furthermore, you’re truly Shardul Thakur if at a time where you can candidly accept your sheer talent such as the prize giving ceremony where you’re the main man, you choose to remain modest, perhaps even even shy instead.
Not long after the buzzing contest between KKR and the RCB, Shardul Thakur immediately collected his player of the game award and vanished the scene seconds after sporting that innocent smile during some quick shout of the shutterbugs.
He didn’t seem to own the situation when it’s exactly what he had done around an hour and a half ago. When his winning efforts warranted just that. In playing one of the innings of the IPL tournament so far in 2023, Shardul Thakur, one of the most important men of the Kolkata Knight Riders unit at that time also appeared their most invincible.
Rather gladly for KKR, this transformation came about when little was going their way. Arriving in the middle, effectively speaking, at a time where the thirteenth over was about to begin, the odds were hugely stacked against KKR’s favour. Any cricket aficionado would label a scoreboard reading 89 for 5 as being nothing else but as painful as one’s jawline being taken out by a dismissive punch from a dead shot distance.
But instead it’s precisely then and there that one of Indian Cricket’s unique talents get going. Playing a typical counterattacking inning that’s akin to a pugilist who bounces back in the final round inside a ring where nothings quite going his way, the odds soon became Shardul Thakur against the RCB. Only this time, it was Faf and team that were met with decisive blows.
Thakur, who opened his account with a four and in the end scored a thunderous 68 off just 29 deliveries. Surely, the tempo had been set by the lies of Gurbaz and Rinku Singh but the true delight of the KKR turned out to be Shardul Thakur.
Not the man you can keep away from the midst of engrossing action, it’s not really his half century that makes the most headlines or whenever he gets one. It’s the sheer surprising nature of his coming to his very best that endears Shardul Thakur to lovers of a cricket hungry nation.
The key differentiator in this case was that the very guys who had been seen giving Kolkata a hard time- Siraj, Arshdeep and Willey- were being punished as if they’d done a wrong thing in even daring to taunt the Knight Riders.
The assaulter got assaulted and how so; there were no fewer than 9 fours and 3 sixes. Shardul was on fire. Only this time, RCB was up in flames. Given the barrage of wickets that had fallen, the score, lest it it forgotten, being 89 for 5, by the time Thakur arrived didn’t seem would get much better.
Against that circumstance, they had no right whatsoever to go after anything beyond 150.But that thanks to Shardul Thakur’s commanding fifty, the under pressure KKR fought back to reach 204 was simply commendable. When he hits it, it stays hit; he may seem a nervous wreck on some occasions, but Shardul Thakur’s batting is backed by tremendous self belief.
Which is why it brings one to believe that the phrase ‘game changer’ that’s so often bandaged freely and perhaps even lamely perfectly encapsulates the never say die spirit of Shardul Thakur. Hopefully, in the days to come he’ll have more of such knocks in store for legions of his fans to whom he’s Lord.
But good lord, what a beating it is that RCB received pretty much when everything was going their way.
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