Two peculiarities emerged as the Sunrisers Hyderabad’s skipper David Warner lost the toss to Glenn Maxwell and Kings XI Punjab ahead of their match on Friday.
One was that he mentioned about he would have anyway opted to bat first had he won the toss because of his team’s strength being rooted in their batting. And the other was his relief in having Ashish Nehra back into the team, following a brief layoff because of an injury to his neck.
Warner’s belief in his fellow batsmen – and himself – was thoroughly vindicated in the end as the team’s batting order propelled their win. The 38-year-old veteran’s rejoinder was justified as much, in his 3/42 in his stipulated four overs.
On the face of it, it does seem to be costly bartering, with merely three wickets coming at a steep economy of 13 runs. But, it merits consideration that it was his three-wicket haul – in his first match returning from injury – which was pivotally instrumental in his team’s 26-run win over Punjab, especially since the latter two wickets came in the final over of Punjab’s batting innings. Moreover, the figures also gain additional depth in that they are Nehra’s personal best, so far, in this year’s IPL, taking his total tally of wickets claimed to eight in the five matches he’s played.
It’s not then difficult to fathom that while Bhuvneshwar Kumar is the team’s bowling spearhead, the bowler who gets them wickets as much as he reins in the run count, the team is just as dependent on the subtleties of Nehra, the man who looks to be stopping time every time he marks his run-up on the field.
Far removed from the past, yet so near
It’s almost as if eons have passed since Nehra first struck a chord with the national and international cricketing audiences, at the 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup ripping through the entirety of the English batting order, with India defending a meagre total of 250 runs. The (then) 23-year-old’s 6/23 rightfully made him a hero that day. But, for better and for worse, it also limited the scope of his potential growth, restricting him to that one match. Recurring injuries too ensured that his career remained forcefully truncated, except for a few mentions at odd intervals, most of which invariably circled back to his exploits against England.
The IPL then, in all these years he has had a chance to be a part of the event, has given him a chance to step outside that externally cultivated – and enforced – boundary that has affected his career. More importantly, it’s given him an opportunity to re-invent himself as a bowler, in spite of being vastly separated from his first peak – both in terms of age and in terms of the intrinsic format of the sport.
That Nehra has been able to do so, is then as befitting an example of his calibre as much as his bowling prowess is on a given day.
India may have had, as it still does continue to have, no dearth of bowling talent in its cricketing coffers across the country. Bowlers like Ashish Nehra though, come but once in a cricketing lifetime. Or rarely, if luck has had its say, perhaps twice as if offering one last timely reminder to enjoy the player in action before time turns around, in a far more definitive way than before.