Vidarbha's Danish Malewar celebrates his century on the first day of the Ranji Trophy final cricket match between Vidarbha and Kerala, at Vidarbha Cricket Association (VCA) Stadium, in Nagpur, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025. (PTI Photo) Upon completing his three-figure mark, Danish Malewar dropped his helmet and bat on the ground, raised his hands, gazed at the skies with eyes shut, put his index finger into his ears and bowed down. “It’s how I always celebrate, like my idol KL Rahul, just to show that I am at peace, that the outside noise doesn’t affect me,” he says, with a bashful smile. None begrudged a rare show of blustery youth, for he had batted with preternatural poise to script his second hundred, an unbeaten 138 (259 balls), of his maiden first-class season and put Vidarbha on the saddle of the Ranji Trophy final (258 for 4 ).
Malewar is only 21. But he could pass off as a high schoolboy; the stubble is thin and patchy, his voice is faint and quivery, and drowned in the chatter of his colleagues playing football on the edge of the fence. But with the bat in his hand, he is articulate and time-travels into a mature, battle-hardened batsman, whose stroke-play blazed as much as his maturity. There are no peculiar quirks about his batting; the movements are precise and decisive, the switch of weight to either feet is seamless, the judgment of length on a surface where the ball occasionally kept low, was immaculate. He possesses so much time that he concedes an impression that he could be late into his strokes, yet he finds himself at the right place at the right time. Ask him about this gift and he says, demurring. “Don’t know how it happens, but maybe due to practice.”
Off-side preference was evident. The movement Kerala’s seamers sought fuller lengths in pursuit of lateral movement, which manifested intermittently, he just stretched forth and punched them through the line, his high front elbow winking at the blue, spotless skies. He was hardly beaten on the drive because he rarely attempted to drive anything un-drivable. No throwing of hands at the ball, no over-exuberant slashes at wide balls. He left the balls in the corridor adroitly, as though he had drawn an imaginary line that he didn’t breach. At the start of the innings, he once stabbed at the ball, the edge flew past gully to gift his first four, but thereafter, he desisted such unwieldy urges. “I have been a bit reckless in some of my earlier knocks, when I failed to convert my half-centuries (5) into centuries. So I was determined to get one, and no better time than a final,” he says.
Yet, he purred along at a healthy run-rate because he assured the loose balls raced to the ropes. The persevering Eden Apple Tom was driven languidly through mid off—nothing but a front-foot stretch and the hands descending in a fluid straight swing to reroute the ball past the bowler. A more audacious stroke was the punch off the back-foot. He goes fully back, unlike several modern-day batsmen who go half backwards and rely on their hand-eye coordination to manufacture the impetus. But he is rooted to the conventions, goes back, stands tall, rises with the ball, gets on top of it and coaxes it through covers. MD Nidheesh, the most penetrative of Kerala’s bowlers could only stand and admire an on-the-rise punch off his bowling. So stood N Basil, when he was flicked from outside the off-stump through mid-wicket with a wristy flourish, an ode to the virtuosos of Hyderabad, VVS Laxman and Mohammad Azharuddin.
To contain his off-side flourish, the reactive bowlers veered into his body, whereupon those silken wrists swirled them ball through unusual paths. Post lunch, he fed on the middle-stump savouries, rolling his wrists over them to the fence. He would celebrate his hundred with one such stroke, two balls after he had thumped Aditya Sarwate over his head to race from 93 to 99 in one calculated swipe. It’s the stroke that first came to his mind when asked about his best shot of the day.
“That was my favourite shot,” he says, before he has a rethink and ends up picking out every stroke of his, like a toddler flaunting all his toys in one gasp. “Woh flick mara na, back to back, woh bhi acha laga. Aur woh pull, aur wo back foot punch, aur…” He could not stop gushing about his strokes.
Short-ball intrusions were promptly nipped as he pulled and cut with unfussy finesse. He pulled the nippy Eden, and glanced Basil off his hips. He later tucked into the left-arm spin of Aditya Sarwate, carving him for a pair of sixes either side of the sight-screen, before late-cutting him when went shorter. Kerala SOS-ed their miracle man, Jalaj Saxena, only to be crisply swept. Captain Sachin Baby shuffled his seamers, set unconventional fields, tried to strangle him, bait him with intemperate shot-making But Malewar remained unshakeable and unshackled to walk back to the dressing room with rippling applause from his teammates and the motley local crowd. “I cannot believe that I have scored a hundred. In a Ranji final. No doubt, the best day of my life,” he says. A day that unfolded like a dream.
A day that he only dreamt when picking a bat for the first time at the age of seven, when his father enrolled him at the academy despite his meagre income as a saving’s collection agent for a local bank, hopping from one house to another all year round. “He sacrificed all his life so that I can make a life. They have sacrificed a lot for me, and I have to make them proud every time I go to bat,” he says. He certainly has made them proud on Wednesday with a hundred of style, silk and significance.
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