MATCH STORIES
Follow UsWhen the five-time Indian Premier League (IPL) champions Mumbai Indians spent INR 15.25 crore on Ishan Kishan at the 2022 Auction, it was evident that the world wouldn’t remain the same. That price tag was always going to be a pressure.
"The pressure of the price tag will be on you for a maximum of 1-2 days after the auction. But at this level, you have to understand that I can’t keep such things in mind and I only have to focus on how to help my team win,” Kishan said in 2022 after the Auction.
Except the price tag’s pressure didn’t have an expiry date. It would always surround the youngster whenever he stepped on the pitch. MI’s owner Akash Ambani couldn’t believe his luck either, with Mumbai getting both Kishan and Jofra Archer on board.
What were Mumbai getting?
A 23-year-old for the long run. One who has always been on the fringe of breaking the wall to become a generational talent. Not only was he a left-handed batter but also a wicketkeeper, which gave Mumbai a lot of options in terms of their overseas options.
Alongside that, they had someone who potentially could be a future captain for the franchise. It felt like they had sorted out everything.
In the first two years after the auction, it felt like Mumbai were slowly but steadily getting the best out of the left-handed batter. Across 2022 and 2023, Kishan scored 400+ runs, but there was one thing that was stinging him: a good strike rate.
Someone who was viewed as a basher was striking at just 120.11 in 2022, and his form saw a marginal improvement over the next 12 months when he upped his strike rate from 120.11 to 142.77. Even when Mumbai as a franchise didn’t do well, it felt like there was some sort of improvement with the way Kishan was batting.
It even took the left-hander across the continents for the Men in Blue, and it felt like life in the Indian lane was quite amazing. But then everything crashed when the 25-year-old pulled out of the South Africa series, starting a downfall he didn’t quite anticipate. It sparked a whole new debate.
Kishan wasn’t playing domestic cricket, which only worsened his situation, leading to new speculation that there was a rift between him and the national team. Considering all this, the 2024 IPL was going to be quite a big tournament for him.
He had to prove a point.
A good start against Gujarat Titans would have augured well for his ambitions. But his start - a four-ball duck - perhaps deep-dived himself under a lot more pressure. In two out of the next three games, Kishan seemingly found back his mojo with a 13-ball 34 and a 23-ball 42, throwing no caution to the wind.
Then came the best possible opposition for one to gain form - Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) - a match that Kishan exited after reigniting his India ambitions. It was the first time this season that Kishan looked calm, and his game proved to be at quite an exciting pace.
One punch followed with another, one four with a six, as he made his way to a stellar half-century off just 23 balls. Five fours, four sixes.
You could name the bowler, and he would have smashed them. That someone could effortlessly smack the bowlers made this entire event quite cinematic. You can’t just write off someone like that, especially with the way the shortest format is changing.
But if history suggests anything, Kishan’s form must always be taken with a pinch of salt. He shows one thing and does the other.
Over his next four IPL innings, his career was down, with scores of 23, 8, 0 and 20.
That we saw a vintage Kishan only a few days ago felt like a dream. It felt like a memory that had captured your mind but would always be in the corner of your brain. You want to believe it, but because of the rarity of the events, you forget to recollect those memories.
The timing of his downfall was that Kishan went from being a first-choice player in the Indian setup to not even being the third-choice wicketkeeper in the country.
The fact that the trio Sanju Samson, Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul have pipped him across formats perhaps served as a big reflection for the left-hander heading into the clash against Lucknow Super Giants on April 30 (Tuesday).
You could look at it as a payback match for the southpaw. Nothing sells more than a player showing his class after not being picked in the Indian side. With Rohit Sharma too failing early, it gave him the perfect opportunity to showcase his skillset.
Or so it felt. But every ball dissed that idea, especially with the left-handed batter being on five off 10 balls. It was only in his 18th delivery that Kishan found his first boundary in the clash. In the next 10 deliveries, he hit two more boundaries, enticing all the fans to turn their television sets on and watch the batter.
Just as it felt like he was about to take off, familiar troubles resurfaced.
In a bid to accelerate, the left-hander succumbed, and you could almost see his entire IPL career flash in front of the screen. It was the same old problem: plenty of promise but a lack of anything materialising.
32 off 36 balls, the second slowest innings that the left-hander has played at the IPL level, only behind his 28-ball 31 against Punjab Kings (PBKS) back in 2020. You could almost see the pain in his eyes as he walked back. It even brought up a whole new debate.
While the rules for the mega auction are yet to be clarified, if a franchise can only retain five players, is Ishan Kishan going to be one that MI would gamble with? That’s most certainly something that the five-time winners would now have to ponder upon.
Ten games, 244 runs, an average of just 24.40, the lowest for him in any season (Min: 10 games) since 2018, it really is a career that has struggled to climb the pressure of the price tag - Everest.
“Spending so much money on Ishan Kishan...He is a very talented and skillful player, but he's not worth blowing nearly your whole salary on,” Shane Watson, who served as Delhi Capitals’ assistant coach back in 2022, told 'The Grade Cricketer' podcast.
When a career like that doesn’t click, the pain endured is quite a tough pill to take.
That’s the case with Ishan Kishan. The things that he promised to the franchise were too good to believe, and when the franchise was sucked into it, they are slowly realising that maybe the price tag does bear its weight.
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