The Indian Premier League may be the flavour of the season. But try talking about it to Robin Uthappa and the youngster says his eyes are firmly set on the inter-zonal one-day tournament for the Deodhar Trophy beginning in South Zone from Friday. In the IPL auction held last month with much fanfare, Uthappa went for a cool Rs 3.2 crore to the Mumbai side. "Right now I am just concentrating on the Deodhar Trophy," he says with a straight face. "That's something I am keenly looking forward to. I really want to do well there," says Uthappa.
Uthappa's contributions in the tri-series in Australia did prove crucial in India annexing the title, but, by his own admission, his batting in the tournament wasn't up to expected levels. In the 10 matches he played the right-hander managed just 142 at an average of around 21 with just one fifty.
"It could have been much better, especially in the finals," he admits. "But now I know the mistakes I have committed. I will work upon my shortcomings in the coming season and hopefully I will rectify them soon," he adds.
Too much shuffling – and not just in the crease towards the off-stump – in his batting order too kind of unsettled the batsman. "That's definitely one of the reasons," he starts. "It's not easy adjusting to different positions in a short time. There are so many factors involved in it. The match situations. The thing was that every time I went out to bat, I was always under pressure. Each time I consciously tried to avoid the mistake I had done the previous game, I ended up committing another. At the end of the day it's the runs that give batsmen the confidence and I wasn't getting many," he elaborates. Having said that Uthappa knows he has to bat according to team's needs, for the time being at least.
Before he embarked upon Australia tour, Uthappa had a modest Ranji Trophy season. Did that affect him in anyway in the initial part of the tri-series? "To be honest, more than the Ranji games, the one-day series against Pakistan (at home) affected me more. As I said I wasn't getting to bat much and whenever I got to bat, I didn't click. But for two weeks before the tri-series, I worked really hard with Dav Whatmore and Paul Champman (physio) at the NCA and that really helped me," he remarks.
Uthappa said there were a couple of technical errors creeping into his game that really bothered him. "In the game against Sri Lanka (last league match) I got to open and suddenly I found myself shuffling across too much. That reminded me of my under-19 days. I told myself 'oh God what am I getting into again.' Another problem was that in the nets I was facing the new ball thinking how I should bat in the middle-order. Naturally I was in trouble because the condition of the ball would be different and I should have changed my game accordingly. New ball is a different ballgame and that sort of messed up my game," he explains.
Even as he talks about his performance Down Under, the 22-year-old terms the tour as 'extremely satisfying.' "It's the kind of experience every cricketer wants to go through. The hostile crowd, the media and the competition in the middle… To come back winners when everyone wrote us off was an overwhelming experience. To overcome such extreme conditions and beat the best team in the world is a special feeling," he gushes. People may call young Indian cricketers an arrogant lot, but for Uthappa it's just the confidence which comes across differently to different people.
"We are confident that we can beat anybody anywhere in the world. We have proved it not just once but twice now. We won the Twenty20 World Cup and now tri-series in Australia. To tell you the truth we didn't have the new clothing when we went for the T20 Cup because everyone thought we will not last the distance. We just had something pasted to cover some of the logos on our old jerseys. But we proved everyone wrong and we will continue to do so," he declares.
