Buttler, Dhoni and the joy of taking it deep in the IPL
KOLKATA: Not for nothing do batters like to chase in white-ball cricket. Yet it can’t be simple if wickets keep tumbling till there’s no one to hold the other end. Jos Buttler would differ.
For Buttler to not get overwhelmed by the lack of partners and take an ever-soaring required run rate head on is a triumph of a mindset that refuses to be shortsighted.
Twenty overs make up an innings, every ball an event by itself, presenting the batter with a range of probable results. Nothing’s over till it’s finally over.
“Keep believing, that was the real key today,” Buttler said in the post-match presentation after his hundred helped Rajasthan Royals equal the highest ever IPL chase on Tuesday.
“At times, I felt like I was struggling a bit for rhythm. I’ve been watching golf and I saw a guy called Max Homa. Anytime the negative thoughts come, I think the complete opposite and dare to dream. That’s what kept me going.”
This myth-crafting bravado isn’t recently acquired though. Buttler always had a reputation of playing long innings in T20, a tactic rarely praised unless his strike rates have been through the roof.
The advantage of playing a long innings however is that it allows a batter to break down the target into smaller, relatively easier, smaller targets. Royals needed Buttler to transform 96 from 36 balls to a more gettable 28 from 12 balls but for that he also had to survive first.
This is where the batting bit of Buttler’s hundred wasn’t entirely unexpected. But it was also not inevitable against Kolkata Knight Riders on a deceptively twopaced pitch with spongy bounce, that too when Buttler was returning from an injury that had kept him out of the previous game.
Entering as an impact-sub, inching to 42 off 34 balls, the last 21 deliveries yielding only 22, Buttler was practically ticking every
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Jaipur box that has fetched anchor-type batting a bad reputation in T20. And Buttler knows how it feels.
“At times you feel frustrated or you are questioning yourself,” he said. “I was trying to tell myself I’d be okay, ‘keep going, you’ll get your rhythm back and try to stay
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Jaipur calm.’ There’s been plenty of times throughout the IPL, you’ve seen crazy things happen. Guys like Dhoni and Kohli, the way they stay till the end and keep believing, you’ve seen it so many times in the IPL and I was trying to do the same.”