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Follow UsWhat do you need as a cricket team when it’s a do-or-die match? Performance, yes! But you need something more. You need leadership. For that to happen in the best way possible, you need the leader to show up in his best shape.
Sadly for the Chitwan Rhinos in the Nepal Premier League (NPL), Kushal Malla, their skipper, had a tournament to forget before their last game in the group stages. In the six innings before this, he had scored only 130 runs at an average of 21 and a paltry strike rate of 109.2. Frankly, it’s even surprising that his strike rate was still above a run-a-ball after struggling to middle the ball all season.
Moreover, in T20I cricket this year, he averaged just 22 and struck at 116.1, which is nowhere near the standards expected from him.
However, when Malla started off the blocks in the game against Janakpur Bolts today (December 14), there was a palpable sense of excitement in the fans who had again gathered in huge numbers to watch their favourite stars put on a show in broad daylight. Malla didn’t disappoint any of them as he teed off quickly and took on the spinners with ease.
The situation he came in wasn’t exactly easy, as the Rhinos had lost Bipin Rawal (3 off 10), Santosh Karki (14 off 12) and Hassan Eisakhail (28 off 19) by the eighth over and were striking at only seven runs an over.
Malla took his time initially, and then finally got his first boundary towards third man in the 11th over. That was the beginning of carnage for the Rhinos, as Malla smoked leg spinner Mohammad Mohsin for three sixes in the 12th over via lusty blows towards square leg and mid-wicket.
Mohsin was bowling fuller, trying for his googly to turn away from the left-handed batter, but Malla got underneath the ball every time and kept sending it towards the crowd, which was going crazy near the leg-side boundary. The sound of the bat was cracking. Malla was on song, and the disappointing year before this was suddenly behind him.
He continued the same destruction when left-arm spinner Arniko Yadav’s just-above-the-sea-level release failed to perturb him. Yadav kept bowling from around the wicket angle, and Malla smashed him for two sixes and a four. This time he hit two of those shots towards the long-off boundary.
In these two overs, 39 runs came for the Rhinos. Soon, his first fifty in the NPL came in the most important match for his team.
When right-arm pacer Kishore Mahato came in the 18th over, Malla smashed him over square leg for another six and also collected a four through the mid-off region. He even tonked James Neesham for a six over the same region in the next over, but was caught out on the next delivery.
However, the Chitwan Rhinos and their skipper had done their job with the bat in the first innings. Along with Ravi Bopara (44 off 32), he had ensured that his team reached a very good total of 180/5. Cometh the hour, cometh the man, as the popular adage says, was written in bold and capitals over this innings by Malla.
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