'Shardul Thakur is a 'khadoos' cricketer who never gives up'

When you want names who can nullify the attack of Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Heinrich Klaasen and Ishan Kishan, you probably think of someone like Jasprit Bumrah or maybe a Rashid Khan. Shardul Thakur is unlikely to be the first name on anybody's list. But the "Lord" works in mysterious ways! He took 4 for 34, including the wickets of Ishan Kishan and Abhishek Sharma, and essentially won LSG the game. Remember, this guy was unsold in the mega auction and only came into the Lucknow side because Mohsin Khan was ruled out of the season because of injury. This is yet another fairytale story in this IPL season.

Normally, when you talk of Mumbai cricketers and the "khadoos" mentality, which has won them 42 Ranji Trophy titles, you're usually referring to batsmen—from Vijay Merchant to Ajit Wadekar, to Dilip Sardesai, to Sunil Gavaskar, to Sachin Tendulkar and so on, you know, Dilip Vengsarkar and Rohit Sharma. But you hardly ever refer to bowlers.

Well, actually there have been some really fine bowlers like Ramakant Desai, if I go back in the past, Abdullah Ismail, Padmakar Shivalkar and now Shardul Thakur. I am putting him in that category because he is such a game-changer. I have seen him for the last 14 or 15 years, when he was just starting out in domestic cricket. I have covered his Ranji matches as a broadcaster.

And he puts in 200 per cent and that's what makes him really successful. He just doesn't give up. He is so interested in making an impact.

We have seen that in red-ball cricket when he has played for India. He was a surprise selection in the playing XI even then, but he became almost a match-winner. And we have seen him in ODIs and T20s, but this season he was unsold.

He got a call from Zaheer Khan, who is the mentor of LSG, saying, “Be ready. You will probably get a call to come and join us and you have to be ready to play immediately. It's not that you come in and you spend 8-10 days settling in.”

So, that's the kind of cricketer he is. We have seen how he can bat effectively. He is a very good fielder. But as a bowler and, why I say he is a "khadoos" cricketer, it's a mentality which says never give up. He’s got a big heart as we know, but he is also very clever. People say he has got a golden arm, which he has, but the golden arm doesn't come by itself. It also comes if you are a thinking cricketer. So, I think in this LSG vs SRH match, his impact was immediate and expansive, monumental actually. Four wickets in a T20 match is a really big deal. And I think this could be, as you mentioned, a fairytale season for Shardul Thakur.

One of the major themes of this IPL has been that the performances, mostly, have come from the Indian players, some of them even uncapped. Remember what Ashutosh Sharma did in that chase for Delhi against LSG. And then Shashank Singh for Punjab; he was a perfect finisher. Even Vignesh Puthur, who took three wickets in Chennai and made a name for himself overnight. Of course, you have Nicholas Pooran who has been brilliant in T20 cricket. Then you had De Kock with the 97 yesterday. So, these big players are doing it, but not to the level that we expect from them or they have in past seasons. And it's mostly about the Indians right now. I mean, that is primarily the objective of the IPL, right? So, really good times for Indian cricket.

The most celebrated uncapped player in the IPL is one M.S. Dhoni. It's a different matter that he has got five titles under his belt and he has captained India with distinction.

But you are right. The guys who have made an immediate impact are people like Vignesh Puthur from Mumbai, a boy from Kerala, son of a rickshaw driver, one of those, you know, trademark IPL stories. There is Vyshak (Vijayakumar), a fast bowler from Punjab. He bowls with such accuracy and so much control. And then there is Shashank Singh and Ashutosh Sharma. Maybe a couple of them have been around for a few seasons, but they are relatively unsung.

And therefore, what obviously is evident is that there is n number of young players across India who see the IPL as a ladder to success in life. It's an aspirational pursuit for them as much as it is a pursuit of skill and passion and love for the game. But it's a way of getting up and ahead in life.

And that's where they are focusing. Vyshak just concentrated on one skill and delivered. So, I think we are going to see more and more of this.

Even an uncapped player gets about Rs30 lakh, isn't it? That's a decent amount to earn in India today. So, that's the kind of players that we are seeing emerge.

And they are going to keep the capped players on their toes. Including the highly reputed ones because, at the end of the day, franchise owners, fans, they all love somebody who is performing to expectations or even beyond. Now, when it comes to star players and overseas players like Nicholas Pooran and Quinton De Kock, Pooran, in my opinion, must rank among the top five most destructive T20 batters in the world today.

He has done it for the West Indies, he has done it for various franchises that he represents in T20 across the world. He just played two matches and his strike rate is almost 260. That's phenomenal. In the match against SRH, he made 70 of 26 deliveries. It’s not easy to contain a batter like him. And then there have been some fantastic knocks from De Kock and Shreyas Iyer.

I think, personally, that Iyer's knock was a nudge ahead of De Kock’s because it came against a better bowling attack. So, these guys have made an immediate impact but it's a long season. We will have to wait and see how the overseas players fare.

I am more interested in seeing [the pitches]. So far, we have seen some matches where the scores have been 225 plus in each innings. And then there are some pitches that are helping the spinners enormously. Like we saw in Chennai. So, it's a very, in a sense, divisive IPL.