RCB posted 240. RCB won. Virat Kohli scored 50. Those three facts should coexist comfortably. The reason they don’t is the fourth fact: his 50 came off 38 balls at a strike rate of 131 in a match where the surface demanded 180-plus and the batting lineup around him produced it. Rajat Patidar scored 50 […]
Riyan Parag is a natural aggressive batter. His best cricket arrives when he commits to attacking intent without the cognitive weight of captaincy decisions occupying his mental space simultaneously. In IPL, he is captaining Rajasthan Royals while trying to bat in the same innings he’s been managing from the field. The mental transition from captain […]
Phil Salt scored 78 off 36 balls against the Mumbai Indians at Wankhede. Six fours. Six sixes. Strike rate above 200 through the powerplay. RCB posted 240. MI chased 222. The 18-run margin traces directly to the platform Salt built before the fifth over was complete. His 132 runs from four IPL innings at 178.37 […]
Five Indian bowlers. Five IPL debuts. Five four-wicket spells. From Shadab Jakati’s spin masterclass on South African pitches in 2009 to Praful Hinge taking three wickets in a single over in 2026, the pattern is consistent. Debut bowlers carry one advantage no amount of preparation can neutralise: batting teams have zero footage. No length preferences […]
SRH’s bowling attack was predictable. Repetitive medium pace on flat surfaces. No genuine threat when the ball wasn’t swinging. No variation that batters couldn’t read with a few deliveries of information. Praful Hinge and Sakib Hussain changed that in their debut match against the Rajasthan Royals. Hinge’s skiddy pace combined with a late swing. Hussain’s […]
Sunrisers Hyderabad had raced past 100 without losing a wicket. Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma were in full flow on a surface offering nothing to conventional pace bowling. The match was heading toward 250-plus, a total that would have stretched even PBKS’s exceptional chasing ability beyond its reliable range. Shashank Singh came on to bowl. […]
Ten consecutive wins. Gautam Gambhir. KKR. Across IPL 2014 and 2015. That number has stood while every modern captain with genuine tactical quality has attempted to approach it and stopped at eight. Rajat Patidar stopped at eight across IPL 2025 and 2026. Shane Warne stopped at eight in IPL 2008. Shreyas Iyer stopped at eight […]
Matthew Hayden’s advice to Jos Buttler was not technical in the conventional sense. It wasn’t a change in grip, stance, or trigger movement. It was simpler and more fundamental than any of those things; watch the ball. Not as a general reminder but as the specific correction to the specific problem Buttler had developed through […]
Most T20 batters produce their best scoring in the powerplay, the phase where field restrictions remove the boundary protection that makes aggressive batting exponentially harder. The moment fielders spread to the boundary in overs seven and eight, the scoring rate drops because the shots that produced fours now need to travel further or find narrower […]
Punjab Kings chased 200 plus. Then they chased 200 plus again. A near-century opening partnership inside seven overs. Priyansh Arya is hitting clean from ball one. Prabhsimran Singh is extending his shot range. Shreyas Iyer is reading variations in the middle overs and targeting specific bowlers rather than rotating strike against everyone. The required rate […]