IPL 2023: Rinku Singh pulls off a heist

Rinku’s tryst with destiny

Nothing suggested the lurking piece of history hovering over Rinku’s head. When Yash Dayal marked his run-up to defend 29 runs in the last over, he was buoyant and cheerful. Only once has a team scored more than these many runs to win a game in the IPL — that game of Rahul Tewatia fame. Such finishes, though, are rare and freakish.

But an event of such rare and freakish nature unfolded at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Sunday. Like the Tewatia smash-and-grab, no one saw this coming. Till the penultimate over, where he struck a six and four each, he had spluttered to 8 off 14 balls, mis-hitting and mis-slicing most of his ambitious strokes. Some even felt that he was better off giving the strike to Umesh Yadav, a freewheeler who could hit a few lusty blows. But Umesh mis-timed a single to long-on—what if he had timed the ball for a six or a four? — to bring a weary-looking Rinku back on strike.

𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗞𝗨 𝗦𝗜𝗡𝗚𝗛! 🔥 🔥

𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗔𝗯𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗲 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸! ⚡️ ⚡️

Take A Bow! 🙌 🙌

28 needed off 5 balls & he has taken @KKRiders home & how! 💪 💪

Those reactions say it ALL! ☺️ 🤗

Scorecard ▶️ https://t.co/G8bESXjTyh #TATAIPL | #GTvKKR | @rinkusingh235 pic.twitter.com/Kdq660FdER

— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) April 9, 2023

What unfolded was frantic, so frantic that it would take a shower to let the events sink in. So Rinku smote the first ball between long-off and extra cover. It was a stroke of doom and desperation, but it ticked off the remarkable finish. The second was more purposeful, wherein he smeared a leg-side full toss over deep backward square-leg. The moment he judged the line, he smartly got inside the line and harnessed the pace of the ball. Hope sprung for KKR, but worrying for Titans, the young Dayal was rapidly losing his composure. Advices and messages whistled through his ears, making him nervier. It manifested in another full-toss, this time on the off-side that Rinku soared over long-off.

Titans were now a worried bunch. Dayal might have prayed for the ground beneath him to crack and devour him. Dayal over-compensated for his erring, full-toss and served up a short-ball, a slower-ball gone awry, that Dayal bludgeoned over long-on.

By then, Dayal, a picture of spayed nerves, and Titans seemed to have lost all hopes of a win. He duly bowled another short ball, that Rinku was in no mood to leave unpunished for his moment of glory. Removing his helmet he dashed onto the onrushing teammates and sunk into their embrace, tears rolling down his cheeks.

He though picked up his poise during the presentation ceremony, where, rather boastfully, he said he had the confidence to hit five sixes and win the game for his team. “I was not thinking a lot, was just reacting to the ball. It kept coming out of the middle, I had belief and it came off in the end,” he would say.

Whatever happens of him — his talents are not entirely unknown, as he averages a shade under 60 across 40 first-class games — but he has leapt onto IPL immortality.

𝐇𝐀𝐓-𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐑𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐝 𝐊𝐡𝐚𝐧! 👏 👏

Andre Russell ✅
Sunil Narine ✅
Shardul Thakur ✅

We have our first hat-trick of the #TATAIPL 2023 & it’s that man – @rashidkhan_19! 🙌 🙌

Follow the match ▶️ https://t.co/G8bESXjTyh#TATAIPL | #GTvKKR | @gujarat_titans pic.twitter.com/fJTg0yuVwu

— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) April 9, 2023

All-googly hat-trick all in vain

There probably has not been a better exponent of the googly than Rashid Khan ever in the game. Not to disown the virtuosic leg-spin wizards like Abdul Qadir and Shane Warne, but neither has explored and exploited the power and possibilities of the googly like the spunky leg-spinner from Afghanistan has in his T20 globe-trotting.

No one perhaps has taken three hat-tricks entirely composed of googly. Rashid has — once apiece in BBL and CPL, and now in IPL. The match was on a knife’s edge — KKR required 50 off 24 balls, not an unachievable target with Andre Russell around and Shardul Thakur yet to arrive — when he measured his run-up for the last over. His first three had bled 35, but now that Venkatesh Iyer had departed for a blistering 83 off 40 balls, Rashid was recalled into action.

With the first ball, he nailed Russell, who was surprised by the bounce and skid. It’s the googly-variant — a variation within a variation—that he bowls. It was short, but slipped onto him to take his inside-edge that lobbed in the air for the wicket-keeper to pouch. The second one was a gift, Sunil Narine slogging aimlessly to Jayant Yadav at deep mid-wicket. The Thakur one was his classical googly, full, flat and turning sharply into his pads from middle and off. “Just keep it simple. Hit the right area consistently. If you miss your lengths, you saw what happened,” he later explained his mantra.

As Rashid, the captain for this game in the absence of Hardik Pandya, flashed a victory sign towards the dugout, the contest seemed over, only for Rinku to impart a wicked twist at the end of a spectacle that was the stuff of IPL dreams.