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Follow UsOne night you are a hero, the other night you are a villain, it is just how the game works.
Cricket’s a funny game. It is funny when it goes your way, and horribly sad when it doesn’t. Mumbai Indians and Punjab Kings could attest to it with their heads nodded. Cast your mind back to the first clash between these two sides at the Wankhede Stadium a few days ago.
Mumbai needed just 40 off 18 deliveries, with a set Suryakumar Yadav and Tim David at the crease. It wasn’t just that, there was Tilak Varma yet to come. Arshdeep Singh had the ball in his hand, and the first ball was a juicy full-toss, slammed straight into the stands for a six.
Arshdeep then turned a corner and bowled 11 straight good deliveries. They weren’t good. They were too good, too good that the stumps were in half. Not once but twice. What Arshdeep did to Tilak in the final over will always be remembered in the history of IPL.
But that Arshdeep 1-0 Tilak lasted only 11 days.
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The uncanny resemblance between the two clashes is eerie. Punjab Kings on that night in Mumbai scored 214. And on both occasions, Mumbai lost one of their openers pretty much early on in the innings. On the first occasion, Ishan Kishan was the culprit, as he walked out for just one. On the other, it was Rohit Sharma.
At 0/1, the odds were stacked well against Mumbai. Rishi Dhawan was moving the ball all over the place. Across the last four innings, Kishan’s scores were extremely underwhelming. In fact, his strike-rates - 121.74, 61.90, 25 and 122.58 - showed that he wasn’t in any sort of form or momentum.
With the ball moving all around, and the target a long distance away, he had to play an innings out of his skin to mow the target down. That’s what he did. Against Punjab’s best bowler this season, Arshdeep, Kishan smacked two boundaries, the first of which was just timing and clinical precision to find the gap.
Then, Shikhar Dhawan took a big risk, bowling a third over of Rishi Dhawan. And that in turn, changed the entire innings around. Kishan danced down the track and made Rishi dance to his tunes.
When the keeper was close to the stumps, he took a step and smoked the ball a long way, and at the end of the sixth over, Kishan was on 26 off 15 balls. It wasn’t until the tenth over that the left-hander got a favourable match-up against Harpreet Brar. What he did was sublime, he stepped down the track and hit a four. Three deliveries later, the left-hander launched it into orbit for a massive six. His impact till then wasn’t the best, and then Arshdeep walked back in.
Arshdeep bowled a perfect knuckle ball or at least he thought, and the result was a massive six from the left-hander. When the spotlight for the longest time was on Suryakumar, the left-hander showed that he is no mug, when he launched an assault, with four and four. By then the southpaw had already scored 74 runs off 39 balls.
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15, 1, 0, 43, 7
Suryakumar’s form was jittery. Even before the IPL kicked off, his scores were 0, 0 and 0. A lot of them had written him off, some even joked around his form, calling him ‘Soonya-kumar’ and the jokes of course followed everywhere. But then against Punjab Kings, the right-hander said enough is enough.
In front of the Wankhede faithful, he tossed the Punjab bowlers all over the park, with some dazzling strokes, including the swooshes that we are accustomed to seeing from him. But the bitter part of that innings for Suryakumar was that he was dismissed, and Mumbai fell off from then.
Later against Rajasthan Royals, Ravichandran Ashwin had just dismissed Cameron Green. Suryakumar walked right into the cauldron. Ashwin is probably the most street-smart of bowlers but then he realised he was against one of the best T20 batters. All Suryakumar did was move and skied one behind the wicket for a massive six.
This was his first ball. Immediately, all those who had written him off went ballistic. They hyped him up like he is Michael Jordan. But the reality was that he was, is and always will be a T20 G.O.A.T.
What Suryakumar does isn’t for the faint-hearted. Punjab knew that. Punjab were perhaps ready for that but then you are never fully ready when it's Suryakumar at the crease. Two balls into his stay, and the right-hander creamed one for a four. Just two balls. Rahul Chahar perhaps is Punjab’s best bet at taking a wicket in the middle overs, and what Suryakumar did was criminal.
“SKY has been doing that for a couple of years. To play behind the wicket is his strength. He utilised it well. Kishan and SKY batted brilliantly,” Rohit said in the post-match presentation, and that was careful as ever.
Suryakumar targeted Chahar. Over 11 balls, he struck 21 runs, with four boundaries. Sweep, backfoot drives, punches and slog, name it and Suryakumar had those shots against the leg-spinner.
When Curran entered, it was a different ball game altogether. Five balls, one life, and Suryakumar launched plenty of rockets. One through the cover, one for the shutterbug and then a wrist that would make the batters from Hyderabad jealous.
Suryakumar never went, and his wrist is probably just made of gold.
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Now the big battle: Arshdeep vs Tilak, 2.0.
The broadcasters just had to show the footage, it had an artful Arshdeep bamboozling a tilted Tilak before castling him with a reverse-swinging yorker. It broke the middle-stump, and that into pieces.
When Tilak walked out, he was well aware of that. Arshdeep continued from that night in Mumbai, with two dot-balls. Two brilliant deliveries. But then he got greedy. Or rather, he thought what he did in Mumbai is re-doable. But then this is what sets Tilak apart from the other batters.
He’s just 20. But the number of high-pressure games that he has played for Mumbai, he might be 24. He was aware of Arshdeep’s tactics. And, Tilak immediately went back and hit the short ball for a massive six. It was the beginning of the end for the Punjab Kings.
Arshdeep thought that he would get one over Tilak but Tilak was one step ahead, as he knelt down to hit a four. When the Punjab pacer tried a slower delivery, the left-hander stood like a rock and muscled the ball over the ropes for a six. It was pure 600 IQ play. That’s why there are talks of fast-tracking him into the Indian setup.
It was always meant to be for Tilak. After a game like that against Punjab earlier where he had a lull, he was always going to be in the limelight. As destiny would have it, Tilak ensured that Arshdeep went for another six.
Arshdeep gave away just 29 runs for four wickets in Mumbai. But in Mohali, he conceded 66 runs, the third-joint costliest for any bowler in IPL history. Tilak settled a battle that Arshdeep started.
Tilak 1-1 Arshdeep
Mumbai Indians 1-1 Punjab Kings
