Ishan Kishan has been there and not there for a few months now. This player was on the Indian team that made it to the World Cup final, but he only played in two games. Both were at the beginning of the event, when Shubman Gill was sick with dengue. As soon as Gill was ready to play, Kishan was put in charge of the 12th man.
Because of this, Kishan wasn’t going to miss the chance to make a difference in Visakhapatnam, which was a much calmer place. He was in the Playing XI. He hit two fours and five sixes in 39 balls to score 58, which was India’s best ever T20I score.
More than half of his runs came in a 112-run stand with Suryakumar Yadav. Yadav is the stand-in leader of the Indian team, and Kishan has spent a lot of time playing with him for Mumbai Indians. The friendship between the two was clear in the way they scored runs together at a rate of almost 190. That match had a similar beat to the one earlier in the day between Josh Inglis and Steve Smith. The only difference was that India scored runs quickly from both ends.
Kishan’s story didn’t begin that way, though. As the third batter, he had to walk to the middle as early as the first over after Ruturaj Gaikwad’s diamond duck. Bowling to him was left-arm fast bowler Jason Behrendorff, who has struck Kishan out five times since 2021, and his strike rate of 98 against bowlers of that style didn’t help either.
Karthik got four runs off of the eleven balls that Behrendorff threw at him on Thursday. Six of them came over in a maid. He was stuck on 4 out of 12 balls at one point. It was a score that didn’t fit with Suryakumar’s theme of playing with more risk than regret.
Then how did Kishan end the night with a strike rate of 149 and two fours and five sixes?
Good fight. The 10 balls that Tanveer Sangha threw at him scored 30 runs. He missed a curveball from the bowler on the 11th ball, but the damage was already done.
“I had a chat with Surya bhai that I’m going to take on Sangha wherever he bowls because we need to get the runs and balls close,” Kishan explained. “Being a lefty batter and a legs pinner bowling [I had to take a chance]. I knew how the wicket was because I kept for 20 overs. So it [the counterattack] was very much needed. When you’re chasing a total like 209, you need to take [on] a bowler, you need to target bowlers whom you can hit.
“You can’t give too many runs to the backend batter; it won’t be easy for them to straightaway come and play those big shots. So, I had to take my chances and I believed in myself. What I have done in my practice sessions was very much at play here when I had to go in for a big shot.”
Before the World Cup, Kishan spent a lot of time on the bench and had a lot of time to work on his game. This is when he talks about practice sessions.
He tells us a little more about what went into planning that bowling attack against Tanveer Sangha. “This is from a while ago, when we were in the World Cup and I wasn’t playing in those games.” During practice, I thought about what was important to me at the moment and what I could do. I also worked hard in the nets. “My 25-year-old coach and I talked about everything: the game, how to take it to the next level, and how to target those bowlers,” he said.
And everything Kishan had worked on came together for him in Visakhapatnam. There was Suryakumar on the other end, who he knows very well. That helped.
“We lost two early wickets and that partnership was very important. I have played with Surya bhai, we are in the same team in IPL also, so I know how he plays, what shots he can play. Felt the communication was very good today in the middle. We were talking to each other about which bowlers we have to target and when we have to, you know, keep on rotating the strike. So, the communication and overall planning, the way we executed all our plans that we were talking in the middle [was great. That partnership] was a time when I thought we were in the game,” Kishan said.
After the double despair of not winning the World Cup and not playing in most of it, it was an opportunity that Kishan made the most of. It was there for everyone to see: that apart from his ability to bat in any position, he also has the wits and game awareness to break out of sluggish starts and make the day count.
