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Cricket Players‘I don’t know where it came from': Shardul can't believe his 68 off 29 that blew away RCB in KKR's record achievement
Shardul Thakur says ‘don’t know where it came from' after smashing 68 off 29 balls to lead KKR to a massive 81-run win over RCB in IPL 2023.
Shardul Thakur just makes things happen... somehow, somewhere, out of nowhere. He is not unplayable with the new ball and does not have the pace and bounce to strike fear in the batters' minds. His variations are not sorcery, his yorkers are not so consistent that he can be a death overs regular and yet, somehow he bowls the hard overs and more often than not prizes out invaluable wickets to leave a telling impact on the outcome of the match.
That is not the end of Shardul Thakur. He has a trick or two up (or many) his sleeves as a batter too. He has a simple way of approaching things when it comes to batting - see the ball, hit the ball. What goes in his favour is that when he hits them, they generally travel far. This quality of his was on full display in front of a capacity crowd at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata. Shardul's outrageous strokeplay struck Royal Challengers Bangalore so hard that they just could not recover from the blows.
KKR had just lost their two pillars - Rahmanullah Gurbaz (57) and Andre Russell (0) of the batting unit - off successive deliveries to Karn Sharma in the 12th over when Shardul walked into the middle. KKR's score? 89/5 with only Sunil Narine and the bowlers to come. RCB would have been hoping to wrap things up quickly and maybe attempt another quick chase to improve their run rate further. But the Shardul factor kicked in.
Watch: Shardul Thakur's spell-bounding knock forces SRK to stand up and…
The all-rounder started his innings with a slice of luck. He did not pick a googly and got an inside edge that raced away to the fine leg but after that, it was all class, muscle and power from Shardul. He hit two fours and a six in the next over off Akash Deep and backed that up with back-to-back sixes of off-spinner Michael Bracewell in the 15th over as KKR made a rapid comeback in the match.
He reached his fifty with a boundary off Harshal Patel in just 20 balls. In between a couple of mishits landed away from the fielders. It was Shardul's day and RCB could do nothing.
When Mohammed Siraj finally dismissed Shardul in the last over, he had already taken KKR to 198 for 7. Umesh Yadav got a boundary and they ended up with 204/7 - this is the most any team in IPL's history has got after losing five wickets inside 100. The previous record also stood with KKR when Andre Russell played a seemingly unimaginable knock to take them from 31/5 to 202 against CSK in 2021.
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"I don't even know where it came from but looking at the scorecard at that time, everyone would have thought we are struggling," Shardul said when asked to describe his 68 off 29 balls.
He credited the coaching staff and his subconscious mind for the onslaught on Thursday night. "Your subconscious mind takes over. You also have to have skills to do that at a higher level, but we also work hard in the nets. There is a period where we can slog it in the nets. The coaching staff do the throwdowns and gives us the option of range-hitting. And you know the pitches - they always suit the batsmen, don't they?" he said.
They definitely are but for the RCB batters, at least not during last night's match. After being battered by Shardul, Gurbaz and Rinku Singh, RCB were rocked by the spin trio of KKR - Sunil Narine, Varun Chakravarthy and debutant Suyash Sharma. The three mystery spinners sneered nine wickets between them to bowl RCB out for 123 as KKR registered an 81-run victory.
"Suyash bowled exceptionally well, and we know the quality Sunil and Varun have. They have fun, take wickets. This was a perfect day," Shardul said.
