IPL 2023: Spare a thought for Yash Dayal as Titans take on Knights again

It would have been a perfect redemption route for young Yash Dayal, the left arm seamer of Gujarat Titans, to shine with the ball in their away match against Kolkata Knight Riders on Saturday.

However, it’s not going to happen as Yash – who became the fall guy after conceding those five sixes to Rinku Singh – is still grappling with the after effects of the onslaught.

There was a rather disturbing update on the 25-year-old, who made an impressive IPL debut for the Titans last season, from their skipper Hardik Pandya after their last game against Mumbai Indians.   

‘’I can’t confirm that (on his chances of Yash Dayal playing again this season). He fell ill and lost 7-8 kilos after that match. There was a spread of viral infection during that period and also due to the pressure he had faced, his condition is presently not good enough to take the field. Someone’s loss is someone’s gain at the end of the day. It is going to take a long time before we see him on the field,’’ said Pandya, a statement which implies that the pacer from Prayagraj (Allahabad) may have played his last game in this IPL.

The pummelling that Dayal received at the hands of Rinku made the later an overnight sensation, as it dumped the Dayal family into depths of despair since that fateful evening on April 9. The IPL has seen countless of such last over finishes, but the stigma of going for the maximum number of runs (31) so far turned him into a villain of the piece.

The TV pundits were expectedly harsh on him as a news agency put out a story on how Dayal’s mother had stopped eating after his son’s plight. Chandrapaul, the cricketer’s father who had played some competitive cricket, had these valuable words for his son: ‘’These are the moments sport is made up of. Even in life, you come across failures, it's important to stand up stronger.’’

The hardest part for Yash’s road back begins now as the comforting words dry up. In professional sport, a newcomer like him is as good as his last outing and the fact that he made quite an impact as a supporting pace bowler in Titans’ triumph last year (11 wickets in nine matches) will be forgotten soon enough. The youngster had fitted nicely into a three-pronged pace attack with senior partners Mohammed Shami and Lockie Ferguson – making the Titans’ pace attack a difficult one to get away.

Ferguson, back with KKR this season, endorsed Yash’s potential and felt he would come back ‘’stronger’’ during one of their press conferences in Kolkata. The job, of course, will not be easy for now with the Titans management resurrecting the experienced Mohit Sharma in place of Yash and the latter delivering on all counts.

Looking ahead, Yash will do well to remember that he can look up to some stellar careers which were once subjected to similar hammering. In the much bigger stage of T20 World Cup, a fresh faced Stuart Broad was famously clobbered for six maximums in one over by Yuvraj Singh and in the 2016 final, Ben Stokes went for four sixes in the last over at the hands of Carlos Brathwaite. 

The conditions in IPL can be quite unforgiving as the dice is loaded against the bowlers – but then having come this far from a city with not much of cricketing lineage – Yash cannot to give up. The journey of the likes of him always makes for such fascinating stories in IPL!