Rohit Sharma scored 94 runs for Mumbai Indians. (PTI Photo)
Lewis’s deceptive power
Evin Lewis doesn’t hit the ball, he clubs it. He doesn’t possess a significant back-lift like Chris Gayle or an exaggerated flourish like Brian Lara – the Trinidadian’s two batting idols, by the way. It’s just unabashed ball striking. It starts with where he stands in his crease. He doesn’t take guard within the line of the stumps. As a result, the bowler is always allowed a candid look at all three of his stumps. That becomes his launch pad. You give him width, and he’ll club you with a short-arm jab over square-leg. You bowl it full, and he’ll just flay you through the covers. That’s his arc. That’s his hitting zone. You stray anywhere near, and he’ll pounce. It’s simple really.
It’s somewhat similar to the Gayle philosophy of batting. But in the last year or so, the 26-year-old left-hander has matured beyond many experts’ expectations and added a layer of consistency that most wouldn’t generally associate with a batsman of his style. It’s come to the fore both at the international level as well as in the T20 leagues that he’s starred in around the globe. But the IPL had somewhat remained elusive.
“I might end up in the Big Bash and PSL and hopefully next year, please God, the IPL,” is what he’d said in an interview to Cricinfo last year. And his performances leading up to the auction had ensured that he didn’t have to pray too hard to attract an impressive bid from the Mumbai Indians. And on Tuesday at the Wankhede with Mumbai desperately needing to get their campaign going, he clubbed his way to an attacking 42-ball 65, which included 5 sixes – each of them hit in his arc -and set the stage for a big total after Umesh Yadav had taken two wickets with the first two balls of the match. If Lewis was all muscle and power – deceptive in many ways – then Rohit Sharma was producing a sublime classic at the other end.
Rohit’s sublime class
Unlike Lewis, Rohit has an elegant back-lift and his shots never lack flourish. So much so that, unlike with other batsmen, it’s not too difficult to decipher when the Mumbai Indians’ skipper isn’t in form. It’s never the runs. You can just see him at the crease and know whether he’s in flow or not. He rarely scores ugly runs.
In IPL 2018 so far, Rohit hadn’t looked at his best nor had he managed to get too far in his innings, having managed only a total of 44 runs in three innings. Rohit’s position in the Mumbai batting order always remains a major bone of contention season after season. Strangely too, considering he’s always looked the most comfortable at the top of the order in white ball cricket ever since he made the move up. So walking out to bat within the first three balls of the innings perhaps was the best thing that could have happened to him here. It meant he could get his eye in – and that one fluent boundary through the off-side that he so yearns for early in his innings – and then just build from there. And build he did.
The RCB bowling was all over the place. It lacked discipline and incision. Way too often, they missed their length and, as a result, played into Rohit’s hands. He took 30 balls for his first 40 runs. And then he exploded. The thing with Rohit’s batting at the death is that he doesn’t showboat much. His destruction in the death overs isn’t based around moving around the crease and getting the bowler to second-guess. It’s, in a way, similar to how the likes of Gayle and Lewis shape up more or less throughout their innings, with a strong base and the conviction that they can hit any ball that lands in their area. That’s pressure enough to contend with for the bowler.
Umesh and Corey Anderson cracked miserably under that pressure, and Rohit made them pay. He smashed both of RCB’s death bowlers for massive sixes on both sides of the pitch, and came within one boundary of yet another IPL ton. But his 96 took Mumbai to 213/6, a total that was always going to be a beyond RCB’s reach despite their batting might.
Virat shines in vain
In any other scenario, Virat Kohli’s unbeaten 92 would have come close to matching Rohit’s belligerent knock. But with RCB constantly behind the run rate and looking beaten from the moment Mitchell McClenaghan sent back Quinton de Kock and AB de Villiers in the same over. But at least, Kohli ensured there was some interest left in the contest. It’s been a quiet IPL for Kohli as well so far, but on the basis of the runs he scored here, and the way he got them, he, like Rohit, might have hit the right note to dominate yet another IPL season.