Delhi Capitals' Tristan Stubbs and KL Rahul
Credit: Reuters Photo
Bengaluru: The batting manual, which was once sacrosanct, has been relegated to a memory in this day and age of Twenty20 cricket. What that’s done is given birth to an entire generation of textbook-defying batters.
Sure, it has worked for the most part with mind-boggling batting sprees around the world. But, when the pitches are juicy or when the bowling is stringent, few batters have the fundamentals to cosy up to.
KL Rahul is one of those rare ones.
On a day when the bowlers were about as good as they could be at a venue considered their worst nightmare, Delhi Capitals’ No. 4 showed that batting - even in T20s - isn’t always about making room and swinging through the line with a rigid emphasis on reaching the stratosphere.
Yes, Rahul’s knock had a few sixes in them, but it was the timing of each of his over-the-fence hits and boundaries which really made this innings one of the best in this edition of the Indian Premier League.
Rahul’s 93 from 53 balls guided the Capitals to a 6-wicket win over RCB, making it their fourth victory in as many games.
Rahul then celebrated vividly, indicating the Chinnaswamy Stadium was his home turf and nothing gives him greater pleasure than scoring big in Bengaluru.
For context, Royal Challengers Bengaluru had put up a pedestrian 163 for 7 after being asked to bat. While a part of that innings had to do with how well Capitals’ Vipraj Nigam (2/18) and Kuldeep Yadav (2/17) did, the rest was entirely on how poorly RCB’s batters were equipped at handling good stump-to-stump bowling.
The difference between most of them and Rahul was that when they found the going tough, they resorted to slashing at deliveries they should’ve been pushing around for singles and doubles. It’s not like the Capitals didn’t bowl any bad deliveries, it’s just that RCB’s batters picked all the wrong balls to go after.
Comically enough, the Capitals’ top three did the same with Faf du Plessis, Jake Fraser-McGurk and Abhishek Porel getting dismissed to ridiculous, unnecessary cross-batted hits off short-of-length deliveries.
These are not deliveries to trifle, especially when well angled, because there is no room to use your hands as lever.
Rahul knew this as well as he knows this venue. So, when the equation read: 98 runs needed from 60 balls, the Bengalurean wasn’t about to press the panic button.
At this point, he continued to dink the ball to third man and pushing it around. Then came Josh Hazlewood in the 15th over. Rahul got what he wanted: pace.
On a pitch which was holding a tad, the Aussie was going to be the biscuit. Rahul chewed on him for 22 runs with three fours and a six. The equation at the end of that quick snack read: 43 needed from 30 balls.
Stubbs helped the equation along but in the 18th over, Rahul wanted to make a statement piece, and Yash Dayal was going to be the victim.
A flat six over mid-wicket was followed by a four off a reverse-ramp and then came a shovel over the deep square leg fence off a full toss on the pads. Even as the ball slammed into the fence, Rahul took his helmet off in a hurry, took a few strides towards the mid-on region, used his bat to draw a circle on the ground and then slammed the bottom of his bat into the middle of the circle.
That was him saying ‘This is my territory’. Who would dare argue?