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Showing posts with label Dinesh Karthik. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dinesh Karthik. Show all posts
A note to the comeback kid, DK.
It’s not yet halfway through the IPL, but you have gone down on one knee, serenading Indian cricket
Dear DK,
Often when I see you, the lyrics of Peter Gabriel’s Biko are paraphrased to DK – so the chorus, “DK, Oh DK, because DK” rings in my ears. You’d probably get this, you may even have heard this song.
In any case, your cricketing career appears no different from one of those rockers that continue to evolve, reinvent and rediscover themselves.
How long has it been? Pretty long, right? Just checked, you made your India debut in 2004. You last played for the country in 2019. But that hasn’t stopped you from doing your thing, helming KKR, losing the captaincy, not being retained; to almost everyone’s surprise, being picked by RCB. Regrouping at RCB. Rediscovering yourself. Yet again.
You appeared reluctant to speak about your future plans at a post-match. You did mention, there were plans. You spoke of your prep then. You did not take names. Then the match against Delhi Capitals happened. If DK wasn’t already box office, he was now. Everyone wanted a piece of you, as did the IPL, RCB and IPLT20.com – Virat Kohli interviewed you.
Now, you are no stranger to interviews. Be it being interviewed or the other way round. You are gracious to a fault. Even during those rough days at KKR. And of course, through golden runs, when everyone delighted in your smile, most notably, Harsha Bhogle.
There always has been that endearing quality to you, as a person. But as a cricketer, it’s been an altogether different story, no? Stats do not tell the DK story, not by a long shot. In no way will they ever do justice to your skill, talent; perhaps as a viewer, your impatience with both was sometimes evident. Dare I compare a younger DK with a younger Rohit Sharma here.
Oh, the reverse sweep. It’s as if being a right-handed bat was your bane. Few batters, would lapse into the reverse so early in their piece. Perhaps you looked solely at scoring opportunities. Perhaps you just wanted to outdo yourself. It was often puzzling.
Your career overlapped with that of MSD. Talk about being born in the wrong time to Indian cricket. It’s one thing to compete with a cricketer, quite another, to compete with a phenomenon. One whose looming shadow swept and kept every other wicketkeeper in the shade; far, far away from ever shining too bright.
Who knows, your high-risk game, those reverse sweeps, were meant to make that impression – to break away from that shadow. After all, how does one defy that which is written in stone. How does one defy a narrative that India wanted to continue to believe in, no matter what. A narrative that CSK still believes in. That so much of India hold on to, in the belief of cricket immortality.
***
Perhaps you have made peace with all of that. Your batsmanship certainly seems to suggest so. You have grasped the role of finisher – that it entails one thing above all – to be a finisher, in the truest sense, you are the last man standing. Over the years, that was MS. The cricket world accepted that, and spoke about it incessantly. Even when MS’ finishing powers were on the wane, the broadcasters never lost sight of the great MSD story. That glimmer of hope. That he still can, because he did.
You, however, are doing it. Not as a memory but NOW. You are finishing games. One after the other. Not out after not out. Your batting numbers are bonkers, as a student of the game, one who speaks about it professionally, you know this.
This resurgence of yours is about details. About being in the present with such aplomb that it is not just talk – it is happening. There is an almost Zen-like quality to it all. After the acceptance of your entire career, your cricketing life, you have washed all that regret, those what-ifs. How else does someone transcend to the present so seamlessly? You have shed many a skin to be here. It is a lesson for us all.
It is a lesson for you. Of accepting what your cricket skill is. As Tendulkar mentioned only the other day, "There are not many right now who are picking up line & length of a bowler so quickly like @DineshKarthik has been doing" Isn’t that what batting is all about – picking up line and length? Transmitting that signal to your cricketing brain and acting upon it?
And how you’ve acted upon those signals, with such clarity. Your all-round angles and hitting zones are at play. You’re sweeping, reverse-sweeping, guiding, gliding, lofting, driving.
DK, you are down on one knee, serenading Indian cricket again. Oh my, how can we not be taken in.
You have rekindled a cricket romance that so few knew existed. You have made us look back, and acknowledge, that you were always there. A part of our lives even when you weren’t. If we forgot to take notice, it’s only appropriate that we collectively apologise.
Sorry, DK.
You are representative of not just your personal journey but that of so many others that are often forgotten. Some hang in. As you have. Very few make a comeback that is so mind-bending – at a time as this, it’s noteworthy to mention journeymen cricketers such as Robin Uthappa and Umesh Yadav. Who have continued to believe, flattening perceptions.
In your wonderful cricketing stories, there is a lesson of hope. What we do not see is the effort. You have spoken of the effort repeatedly. When you go all Modesty Blaise, talking about being “Lucky” and “Fortunate” repeatedly, you also speak about your efforts.
A reminder that at nearly 37, in your 6th IPL franchise, in your 14th IPL season, after lapsing into cricket commentary in England, vowing one and all with your outfits and eloquence, it’s never too late to bounce back.
Last season, you had 5 not outs from 17 games. This season, you’ve already remained unbeaten 5 times out of 6 games. That manic strike rate of yours, that searing batting average, 197 and 209.57. This is nuts. This is also T20. High-risk. Where even the most earnest efforts and calculations go awry.
Even the most calculated attacks at the death are high-risk. Especially the sustained ones, such as yours, match after match. You will know only too well, that with these risks often comes the cost of looking foolish, of being dismissed.
But when a sportsperson surmounts the fear of failure, he probably occupies a zone, that we all simply know as the zone.
You played for South Zone. Now DK, you play in the zone. If you read this, you will probably chuckle that customary chuckle of yours.
Here’s to the last laugh, DK. May it be yours.
Sincerely,
GS
First published here
#IPL DK, Buttler and back in the studio.
@glancescreen
Watch here
What if we decided not to blame anybody?
Is that
even possible? A World Cup semi-final exit, and not blame anybody? What’s there
to write? How will we exorcise our cricketing demons?
Put
yourself in at 4/1 at the fall of Rohit Sharma’s wicket in the second over. You
were there, weren’t you? Did you not chase that wide one outside off along with
Virat? Were you not breathing heavy after Rohit fell? After the assurance of
those five centuries was snuffed out in four deliveries?
When Trent
Boult was running in like some break dancer in a black hoodie - with those precise moonwalking steps and that
gleeful glint in his eye, he had it all worked out. And Matt Henry, more mid-management
banker than break dancer, what was he doing making the ball dance. Such
deception broke the back of India’s batting. Slip sliding away.
9th
July, 2019 seemed eerily familiar. It could be anywhere in the world. It had the
stamp of Glenn McGrath bowling academy vs India in one of those games you were
hoping to snap out of by now. But it crept up on you. India had no choice but
to sleep on it, what else was there to do?
To
overcompensate, Virat went across. And again. He plays these angles. Seven
balls after Rohit fell, one snuck through, into the pads and out. When Virat is
nervous, he wants to review. When he’s the captain, no non-striker will ask him
not to. It delays things. It keeps him on the field longer. In the hope of the
bowler overstepping, the ball missing, something. At 4/2, why wouldn’t you
review? If nothing, just to stay on the ground a few moments more, to breathe,
to feel alive in the game. If Virat could, he would munch on his protein snacks
during those reviews. What did you do? Stare at the screen? Knowing only too
well, it’s happening. Slip sliding away.
Much as
Virat has a look that defies the slide, KL Rahul often wears one that is
consumed by it. They are just a look and say nothing of what either batsman
will do to push the slide back. But when Rahul fell, his dismissal had the
stamp of slide-sucked-me-in. That’s what slides do, players have their ways to
counter them – not often many succeed. Once in a freefall slide, the batsman is
not on terra firma, instead, he’s being sucked into a whirlpool. Those padded
up, waiting to walk in are waiting to slide through. Sacrificial lambs.
When Virat
fell, did you not slide further. Did it not cross your mind, this could be over
in a jiffy, in say, less than 20 overs? Why did the match not get over on the
first day itself? Was it us who willed it not to go down to a 20 over shootout?
Were we not responsible for the gift of the second day? Had we not asked for
this? Running away from rain and Duckworth Lewis calculations? And here we
were, in a similar 20 over shootout, with six fewer wickets.
So just as
we blame the players, we blame ourselves. Our refusal to expect sport for what
it is. A refusal to expect defeat.
When Kohli
fell, Rishabh Pant walked in, somewhat cheerily, to play his 9th
ODI, his 8th innings, his 4th in this World Cup. By now,
it’s best to forget whose replacement he was, because from where we are now,
that’s too much of a dwell on the past.
By the
fourth over, Dinesh Karthik joined Pant. At 5/3 it appeared even gloomier than
the day before. The Indian innings was not even 20 minutes old.
Were you
still there? Were you mathematically calculating acceptable, face saving
margins of defeat?
For 25
minutes, Karthik put on a defence-ballet class. He defended as you would, your
honour, your cricketing journey, your cricketing life. For, in a way, that is
what he was defending. There he was, wedged in between, the wicket keeping
future and past; looking as India has, for a meaning to its elusive keeping
present.
How do you
play, when each innings challenges you to rewrite your cricketing world? But
here was Karthik, with that chance. It’s another thing, he gave that chance to
Neesham, who accepted single handedly, also wrong handedly with such
brilliance, it reaffirmed the slide to almost mythical proportions.
Perhaps,
Karthik slid into a crack, but nobody was looking. All they saw was Neesham’s
hand that emerged from a crack.
The
Pant-Pandya partnership, although three shy of fifty, and one ball shy of 13
overs, seemed removed from the slide. There was an early Pant chance but there
was bravado too – from 24/4 where else to go? Somewhat fitting, they both made
32, and seemed unfazed by the slide. When Pant fell, though not before hitting four
4s, going for his first 6, he was miffed. The frame captured Pandya’s
expression – it didn’t give anything away. Pandya was as far removed from it as
later, Dhoni would be from balls wide outside off.
What else
is there to do but to remove yourself from the slide?
As for
Jadeja, he was not just removed from the slide, he appeared removed from the
game and himself. He was, by all accounts, having an out of body experience.
It took
India’s 8th match in the World Cup to play Jadeja. This was only his
second match in the tournament. In the warm up match against New Zealand, when
India was 39/4, Jadeja came in at 8, smashing 54(50) that day.
If there
was any pressure, Jadeja had transferred it on to commentary. Reminders of his
First Class triple hundreds were oozing out of the box. FC reminders that
would’ve made Gavaskar proud on his birthday.
From Day 1,
everything Jadeja had done was nothing short of an eloquent cricketing
matrimonial – Attractive fielder, highly qualified bowler and now – changes not
just his complexion but the match’s too.
There was
freedom that was far removed from the situation. Dhoni at the other end was
doing his usual Dhoni things, also far removed from the situation. Slide? What
slide?
Jadeja was
swiveling at the crease, Jadeja was coming down the wicket, Jadeja was making
India dream again. Jadeja had banished the slide.
In the end,
he scored more than anyone, faster than anyone. There was audacity moulded with
thought – there was on display skill, intent, bravado and with it fortune too.
Jadeja made
the match worthy. He raised the semi final. He raised himself, his
swordsmanship. Jadeja had taken his hurt and made it into something compelling.
Jadeja
wanted to be more than a perception. He counter attacked a comment as much as the
Kiwis.
And while
we may not blame anybody, will it be incorrect to thank someone?
If one
man’s counter to a perceived ridicule was such, just imagine what fruit a word
tearing into the other ten would have borne?
First published here
Dhoni & Sons – from MS to Rishabh and beyond.
How will you remember the IPL, five-ten years from now? What of it, will
always stay with you? What was that one night, that will shine brighter
than all?
It won’t be who won, who scored how many, who knocked over how many
batsmen. It’ll be about who was there.
Who continued to be there. Who was there, even when his team ceased to
be.
The man in yellow. The man who made a city yellow. Its people yellow. Its
stadium yellow. Its fans yellow. Painted. Even when tainted, still yellow. It
was, wasn’t it? Yellow? A sea of. A splash of. A splurge. A song. It’s on your
lips, say it? It was all yellow.
The play was cold. Calculated. As the perfect cricketing murder on a
cricket field. To finish the other.
No matter what the build-up, the clues, the giveaways, the
stand-my-grounds, the utter ridiculousness. No matter. It really didn’t matter.
The man would do what only he could do. Tease you, like he had so many
times before. Kill you softly, with his cricketing cliché of a song.
Make you pull out your asthma inhaler. On the last ball of the 20th over
again.
Nearly kill you again. You could be blue, red, orange, pink; yet how
would you resist the man in yellow.
***
IPL games aren’t supposed to stay with you. 8 pm, following
day, you are already over the previous match. Its idiocy, miscalculations,
bravado, dropped catches, required run rates, rants. That’s the price of binge
watching. Unless.
Unless something else happens. Something that comes way out
of the IPL script. A script written by the man in yellow.
“Not again?”
“He’s leaving it too late again?”
“But you know why he’s doing that by now?” It’s maths.
Probability. To increase the chances of a win.
“Surely by now he knows better; he could do it before, not
so any more.”
Few batsmen hit boundaries from the get-go. Somehow, what
makes these situations priceless is the recognition that they can’t. Even if
they could, let’s just assume they can’t. That’s one of the probabilities taken
into account.
And by the time these other batsmen make it to the crease,
it’s nearly closing time. That’s added pressure; not an assumption, a given. So
here you are; Dhoni’s partner who has just walked in – not only can he not
smash it across the ropes on his first few balls; there are very few balls
left.
You could be a batsman in 3D glasses, playing video games,
Dhoni will not give you the strike. This is Dhoni’s realm, and he makes the
rules. For real. Virtually too. Bravo to that.
***
After all these seasons of yellow, a fresh dash of blue is
supposed to match up, what, even outshine?
Rarely does a mention of Rishabh Pant not invoke one of
Dhoni. What Pant can’t do, Dhoni can. What Pant can do, Dhoni can’t. It’s
brutally competitive these mentions; as if neither player can be whole without
the other.
So when Dhoni chaperoned CSK to within one run of an
unlikely win against RCB, who else but Pant was summoned. Likewise for Dhoni when
Pant stormed Jaipur’s citadel with four balls to spare.
Barely a week since the World Cup squad was announced, Pant
served himself a reminder. That beyond a wicketkeeper, beyond a comparison, he
is a screechingly unique batsman – with a batting voice like few others in the
game.
One that can only be silenced at its own behest. That
doesn’t need to assault the first few balls to rip apart a big T20 score.
Pant’s 3 off 6 in the 10th over to 23 off 14 in
the 12th, mutated rapidly to a match altering 72 off 35 balls.
His technique was never pristine enough for the purists.
Who’s that? Dhoni? Pant?
In Pant’s omission, the selectors may have done a huge
service to the Delhi Capitals - within a
week, he appears to have grown up. Gone is the backbencher’s tickled grin. Gone
is the mischievous chalk thrower. Gone is the compulsive chirper too? Who knows
what Pant has become or can become – in his game, is an assortment of unlikely
angles and strokes, uncommon to most Indian batsmen.
While most India batsmen tend to play in the V, Pant has
always picked the arc of his alphabet. His cricket is combative, it appears
both brave and foolish – his game is high risk, to back him is not unlike
investing in an exciting small cap working out of a shed.
Once upon a time, a few perceptive men, invested in small
cap Mahi and made it the blue chip MS Dhoni that we know today.
***
Rishabh Pant is 21. Dhoni pushing 38. Pant has played 5
ODIs, Dhoni 341. This is his 15th year in international cricket.
While this is Pant’s third year, he is still not a mainstay in two out of three
formats.
Until as recently as March this year, Pant was on track to
make the World Cup squad – what went wrong? He played in India’s last two ODIs
before the squad announcement – arguably his 36(24) and 16(16) were not enough.
Nor was the 23(19), the day before the squad was announced.
Or the 46(31), a couple of days before that. IPL runs, though not quite
finishing runs. More than all these runs, the slipups in those two ODIs, while
keeping to spin may have cost him his spot.
In walked Chennai cousin, Dinesh Karthik, who didn’t score
in his last ODI innings in late January. His 18(14) on squad-announcement eve,
and 2(3) a couple of days before, didn’t deter the selectors either. Those 91
ODI games across 15 years, his T20 finishing form, keeping credentials, sealed
the deal for DK.
As is often the case, the elders found comfort in the
elders. The escape from Pant is temporary. Each game he plays in the IPL will
be a reminder.
***
After CSK’s win on Tuesday night, Dhoni spoke of the returns
on investment in Shane Watson. In spite of few scores of note, Watson was
persisted with. Possibly because of the assured returns in the long run. Last
year, he won CSK the title. Yesterday, he won them a game.
Watson is a tried and tested large cap. Yet in the IPL, few
teams would’ve given Watson such a long rope. Watson said so himself. You know
it too.
It’s time the Indian selectors, took a leaf out of CSK’s
book. And took a punt on Pant. Isn’t that what Punter is doing?
Pant is not unlike Dhoni as a batsman. Both flam but equally
unconventional and far from pleasing to the eye.
In the days and months that follow, Pant should extract
whatever he can from the master. And hope that the man in yellow is up to some
yeoman service.
After an entire generation of cricketers thanked Sachin, it
could soon be Mahi’s turn to be thanked by upcoming wicketkeeper batsmen.
Welcome to Dhoni & Sons. Minds will open when questions
are asked.
First published here
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