With a fluent unbeaten 93 from 55 balls, Wriddhiman Saha shrugged away the monkey that refused to get off his back through the course of the tenth edition of the Indian Premier League.

A career-defining home Test season had felt like a distant memory for the Bengal keeper. It didn’t help that the Kings XI Punjab team management shuffled him around between No 3 and 7 with little direction and purpose. Saha’s confidence and touch seemed to have eroded and on a handful of occasions, even took a toll on his keeping, which has been a reliable feature of his repertoire even since he burst onto the scene.

Prior to the Mumbai Indians game, Saha had paltry returns of 128 runs from 12 games at 11.63. There were even murmurs that he was hanging on to his spot in the side purely on reputation and lack of quality options in the squad.

It was taking a toll on his team’s balance too. All of KXIP’s wins in the tournament so far have come on the back of their top order consistently getting runs. Despite having a clean hitter down the order in Axar Patel, Saha’s struggles weakened the lower-middle order. In this era and format, it is not uncommon to see teams loaded with clean hitters down the order. This deficiency of KXIP was brutally exposed in an earlier group game – against Sunrisers Hyderabad – when they fell narrowly short in a chase.

Saha needed to come good

Going into a must-win game against a side with exemplary batting depth, KXIP needed to cash in on the placid wicket and hit the ground running early after being put into bat.

Saha, sent to open the batting alongside slam-bam specialist Martin Guptill, was cutting and flicking the ball with consummate ease. The uneasy and perplexed body language and the failure to rotate strike, which had engulfed his stay at the crease through the IPL had vanished. Guptill hummed while Saha conducted the orchestra. He was at ease with singing the high notes too. Invariably, when a batsman is in full flow, “common sense cricket”, for the non-striker, is attributed in how well he can rotate the strike.

Except, Saha had different plans. He was running a race of his own and could stand toe-to-toe with the brutality with which Guptill and skipper Glenn Maxwell were bashing the ball.

How did Saha’s fortunes change by just promoting him as an opener? That isn’t his natural position either. His career-best IPL knock – a monumental 115 from 66 balls which came in the 2014 final against Kolkata Knight Riders – came at No.4.

The 32-year-old has played enough late cameos over the years to warrant respect as batsmen who could take the side home or provide a good final flourish, if his team is batting first.

‘Common sense cricket’

One of the features that stood out during this essay was the manner in which he got his scoring shots. Playing with a straight bat, he picked up 38 runs down the ground. The Mumbai bowlers missing getting their lengths horribly wrong also aided Saha’s quest for form, and ensured that full length deliveries were carted across the park – he got 49 runs from 26 of those deliveries, and was an assured presence while dancing down the track against Harbhajan Singh, who had a rare off-day.

The boundaries came thick and fast. In the 2014 final, his 115 was peppered with 10 fours and 8 sixes – 98 of his runs came in boundaries alone. Fast forward three years, the tale was no different, it was boundaries that helped the street-smart cricketer inflict damage: His 93 was laced with 11 fours and 3 sixes. While he may not leave the impact of a Maxwell, Chris Gayle or a Kieron Pollard with his big hits, Saha too, thrives on depositing the ball to the ropes.

KXIP would agree with the timing of Saha’s return to run-scoring ways.