Patidar: The hero RCB needed

With a century laced with 12 fours and 7 sixes, Rajat Patidar stresses advantage of a clear mind and a straight bat flow

KOLKATA: “I have seen many impact innings and many innings under pressure over many years. I have not seen many better than how Rajat played today,” Virat Kohli said about Rajat Patidar’s hundred in Wednesday’s Eliminator win against Lucknow Super Giants in an interview to iplt20.com. “Under pressure, big game, first uncapped player in the history of the IPL to get a hundred in the playoffs—the magnitude of the game was so big that I was feeling the tension in the air because I have been in those situations where we have to cross the line as a team. What he did was very very special and I don’t think anyone should take that for granted. You should understand the excellence of his innings and appreciate, as a cricketer, to watch an innings like that.”

No one can appreciate the value of a hundred better than Kohli. But for Patidar, 28, who didn’t have an IPL contract at the start of April, this may be the best thing to have happened to him. Ever. In an innings where Kohli and Faf du Plessis contributed 25 off as many balls, Patidar scored a 49-ball hundred with the authority of a batter who knew what he was doing. Nothing — except for that blunder in the outfield Deepak Hooda isn’t likely to forget soon — went wrong with his innings. The bat came down nice and straight, the head was still and the followthrough was generous yet precise. You really can’t hit 12 boundaries and seven overing boundaries without getting the basics right.

Yet there was a time when Patidar wasn’t sure of himself as a cricketer in the first place. Age group cricket hadn’t yielded many opportunities when he wanted to be a fast bowler. At 18, Patidar was literally standing at the crossroads of his career. Former India player Amay Khurasiya remembers the time Patidar had walked into one of the junior camps organised by the Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association (MPCA) almost a decade back.

“He was a quiet, tranquil boy, magnanimous in his approach towards the game. Rajat came to us when he was being discarded at the junior level. He wanted to change his game,” said Khurasiya, who has headed different coaching programmes at MPCA for over a decade. “He had the talent, sincerity and honesty. But he became better once he adapted to a certain technicality. His bat flow is very straight, and he presents the full face of the bat every time. We worked on that,” Khurasiya added.

Patidar’s graph of improvement continued to soar under several coaches after Khurasiya, including domestic legend Chandrakant Pandit who was his coach at Madhya Pradesh, as he impressed everyone with his mature, live-in-the-present brand of batting. “The way he celebrated also tells you he has a good head on his shoulders,” said du Plessis. “He has got all the shots. Every single time he attacks, he transfers the pressure back on the opposition.”

Khurasiya attributes this confidence to the faith Patidar spontaneously exudes through his batting—a particular degree of relief and stability every coach or captain wants to be sure of at the dugout. “He always oozed this trust factor. And you got to see it more when he started expressing himself deeply through his batting. That helped Rajat stand his ground and overshadow everyone yesterday.”

Sent in to bat with the scoreboard reading 4/1, Patidar knew his priorities. “There was nothgoing on in my mind. I wasn’t under any pressure too. It didn’t matter to me if I played out a few dot balls initially because if I stayed I knew I would be able to make up for it,” he told Kohli in the interview to iplt20.com.

The first ball from Mohsin Khan, which beat Patidar all ends up was the welcome every batter fears. But by standing tall and punching Dushmantha Chameera past point for a four, Patidar declared he wouldn’t cower to LSG’S impressive fast bowling arsenal. Avesh Khan went for consecutive fours before Chameera was once again picked on in the seventh and the 12th overs. But it was really in the sixth over, off Krunal Pandya, that Patidar made his intention known by hitting 4,4,6 and 4.

That was the first time in the game Patidar was becoming confident of something really big here. But in order to do that, Patidar also had to bat longer. “Till date I played till about the 14th or 15th over of a T20. We had lost a couple of wickets then so I was thinking how to keep one end safe and guide the team to a good total.”

In the 20 legal deliveries he faced from the seventh till the 15th over, Patidar struck three fours and one six. That’s a conversion rate of one hit per five balls. But with eight hits in the next 15 balls—that’s a conversion rate of over 50% — Patidar more than made up for the comparatively slower batting. The change was barely noticeable not only because when Patidar hit, he hit it big but also because Dinesh Karthik didn’t let the scoring rate sag by striking at over 160. That fortune too favoured Patidar was evident when Hooda spilled his catch but what he did next had nothing to do with luck. In fact, it was nothing less than a barechested war cry—patidar telling Ravi Bishnoi and every LSG fielder in the deep that not once, not twice would he do to them what almost got him dismissed. That sequence of 6,4,6,4,6 in the 16th over was Patidar making T20 hitting brazen and redundant at the same time.

FORMAT

PLAYER

MAT

RUNS

RUNS

BALLS

HS

BALLS FOR 100

AVE 4S

SR 6S 100S

SR 50S

AGAINST