MATCH STORIES
Follow UsTravis Head has been batting like a beast incarnate in the last couple of years, but he’s especially been untouchable in the finals of tournaments.
In the calendar year 2023, Head played in two finals: the final of the World Test Championship (WTC) and then the final of the 50-over World Cup in India, in Ahmedabad. The left-hander batted like a man possessed in each of those games.
He smashed 163 in the WTC final on a green seamer, walking in at 76/3, in a very precarious position. Then, five months later, he hammered a scarcely believable 137 (120) in the biggest encounter in the sport on the grandest stage of all, with his side reeling at 47/3 with 100,000 + fans cheering for India.
In both encounters, it looked like Head had an inexplicable plot armor. He somehow managed to survive the best balls the opposition bowlers bowled. And, in these games, everything he touched seemed to turn into gold. It was almost as if he possessed some kind of a juju that made him invincible.
The 30-year-old entered the IPL final against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) on May 26 (Sunday) short of runs, having registered 0, 0 and 34 in his previous three knocks, but was still primed to shine in the final because of this juju he possessed.
But in life, everything comes to an end. And on Sunday at Chepauk, it was the turn of Head’s finals juju to die down and come to a halt.
Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) fans would have breathed a sigh of relief when Head did not take strike against Mitchell Starc, the man who’d dismissed him five times previously in just eight balls, and had also cleaned him up in Qualifier 1 in Ahmedabad.
Starc knocked over Abhishek Sharma on the fifth ball of the final but the good news from an SRH perspective was that Head had survived the left-armer’s first over by merely being at the non-striker’s end.
At first, it seemed like Head’s ‘juju’ was doing its work when he successfully managed to survive Starc’s first over — by not facing a single ball — but, as it turned out, it was written in the stars for this night in Chennai to melt away much of the ‘finals’ plot armour he possessed.
In walked Vaibhav Arora to bowl the last ball of the second over, and Head nicked the ball to the wicketkeeper Rahmanullah Gurbaz. The dismissal was eerily similar to his dismissal against Afghanistan in the World Cup, at Wankhede. Heck, the wicketkeeper was also the same.
The ball angled away from the left-hander and he fended at it tentatively. He ended up nicking the ball and, boom, that was it.
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