Yash Thakur’s pace, Krunal Pandya’s guile orchestrate Lucknow Super Giants successful defence against Gujarat Titans

Synopsis:The forgotten Pandya and feisty Thakur conceptualise Super Giants’ maiden win over Gujarat Titans

The forgotten Pandya

After his final over, Krunal Pandya, a bandana shackling his bouncing hair, held the ball aloft and waved to all parts of the ground. The spectators reciprocated with thunderous applause. The electronic scoreboard flashed his figures. It read 4-0-11-3. The forgotten Pandya brother had, yet again, asserted his unsung knack of defining games.

In a sense, he is his brother Hardik’s antithesis; flying under the radar, his set of skills commonplace. One would find several of his type, a flattish left-arm spinner who can freewheel with the bat, in the leagues of Mumbai and its neighbourhood. But dish out a slow, slightly dual-paced surface, and he becomes deadly. He could repeatedly pound a length, sustain a nagging line, alter the pace, which he performed with devastating effect, and niggle batsmen to frustration. Like he did in his first over.

Titans had just lost Shubman Gill, to a wicked Yash Thakur nip-backer, after a racy start, 54 runs in 5.5 overs. Krunal modulated his lengths and pace so beautifully that Titans mustered only two runs. The hitherto composed Sai Sudharsan froze. Suddenly, he could not find the boundary, or sneak singles. Frustrated, he attempted an ungainly swipe, mistimed and perished. It came five balls after Ravi Bishnoi had evicted Kane Williamson with an acrobatic return catch. From 54 for no loss, Titans slumped to 58 for 3.

Lucknow: Lucknow Super Giants bowler Yash Thakur celebrates the wicket of Shubman Gill during the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 T20 cricket match between Lucknow Super Giants and Gujarat Titans at the Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Stadium, in Lucknow, Sunday, April 7, 2024. (PTI Photo/Ravi Choudhary)

The buoyed Pandya would not stop. That is his biggest virtue — his relentlessness. In the same over he dismissed Sudharshan, he dismissed BR Sharath, this time dropping the pace and coaxing an ungainly mop. Suddenly, batsmen saw an aura around him and became fearful. He would snare the wicket of Darshan Nalkande, plunging Titans to 80 for 5. Thakur would return with a double-wicket maiden to twist the knife. If Pandya and Thakur made the defence possible, Nicholas Pooran and Ayush Badoni made the fighting target possible. In the last three overs, they struck 37 runs, which proved to be the difference in the end.

Feisty Thakur

Watching the top edge from Noor Ahmed evade the leaping gloves of KL Rahul, Yash Thakur swung his arms wildly and cursed his fortune. He had snared four wickets, the last of them of the dangerous Rahul Tewatia, Titans’ last flicker of hope, but the chance of a rare fifth in an IPL game had narrowly escaped him. His agony, though, was fleeting, as he dismissed Afghanistan the left-arm wrist spinner to complete his five-for. He knelt and kissed the turf, before teammates swamped him.

The crowd might have come expecting Mayank Yadav to surge their adrenaline. But the latest pace sensation bowled just an over, costing 13 runs, and then retreated to the pavilion after picking a strain. But the Thakur show was no less rewarding an experience. He uncorked a gem to detonate Gill’s furniture. The ball — the last of the Powerplay — curled into him in the air before seaming further inwards after landing and located the gap between bat and pad to shatter the stumps. Titans never recovered from the blow. It didn’t help that Gill was moving in the crease, uncharacteristically.

Strangely, he was taken off, but reintroduced to bowl the 16th over, the match almost sealed. Thakur utilised the opportunity to demonstrate another dimension of him, his ability to hit the back-of-length zones and extract bounce. He has an unflappable mind too —Tewatia hammered his length ball for a six, but he had the wits to slip in a slower short ball on the stumps. Tewatia miscued and perished. Thakur’s role model is Umesh Yadav, and he has inherited some of his traits too, like the relentlessness and robustness, the courage to pick himself up after getting hit. While he doesn’t ratchet up the pace like Mayank, he makes the ball leap from hard-length areas, even on a slow surface as the Ekana one, and often hits the splice of the bat. Super Giants, thus, have dizzying depth in fast bowling. And now their spinners too are getting in the act.

Brief scores: Lucknow Super Giants 163/5 in 20 overs (Stoinis 58, Rahul 33, Pooran 32) beat Gujarat Titans 130 all out in 18.5 overs (Sai Sudharsan 31; Yash Thakur 5/30, Krunal Pandya 3/11) by 33 runs

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