Even by modern-day batting standards, chasing 258 is a herculean task, with the team in pursuit asked to rattle along at nearly 13 runs per over. Unless your franchise hails from Punjab, such adventures are an exercise in futility. However, cricket is called a funny old game for a reason. When those who play it engage their beast mode scripts are torn off and chucked in the bin. Unfortunately for Gwalior Cheetahs, Ankush Singh had flicked on that switch.
In seven overs, Chambal Ghariyals were buccaneering at 122/1. He thrashed Anubhav Agarwal on the rise to make his intentions clear upfront, took 22 off Mangesh Yadav’s first over, hit sixes downtown even as Arpit Patel bowled on a respectable length, and deemed Akash Raghuwanshi a shadow of the tall, penny-pinching quick he is. Ankush is considered somewhat of a local legend for his ball-striking ability, so the defending side was bracing for impact, but few had envisaged a boom rivalling the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia.
Generalization is best avoided here because, in all fairness, the game had followed an explosive trajectory. Kuldeep Gehi meted out to Aman Bhadiroya virtually the same treatment that Stuart Broad got from Yuvraj Singh. Rajat Patidar was carting Avesh Khan all around the park as if he was a retired bank official chucking pies over the weekend and not the most accomplished pacer to have ever come out of Madhya Pradesh. Both the batters, forming a left-right combination, dinked Avesh for a maximum each in front of square with their weight hanging back. The entertainment was so on fleek in the first half that the mascot, colloquially named Bhiya, dancing on Ishq Tera Tadpaave in the innings break felt like an overkill to the senses.
If anything, the central nervous system needed a bit of emptiness to gear up for the overwhelm in store. Ankush walked off to a standing ovation at 101 off 33, an innings laced with 11 jaw-dropping sixes. It was the closest one can come to witnessing terror on a sports field, with leg-spinner Aman’s final delivery being an attempted bumper indicative of the authority Ankush had stamped upon anything in his arc. It’s not to suggest that he got away with the last resort, with a handsome pull from the meat of the blade sailing over the fence.
Fortune favoured the brave too. Inside the PowerPlay, Arpit Patel’s arm ball had rapped Ankush on the pad first. The bowler as well as the keeper appealed, but their shout wasn’t convincing enough for the umpire to raise his finger. He may have had his own reservations, for the bat was right next to the point of impact, Ankush’s knee roll. Guess what? Three reds.
He also copped a bouncer by Mangesh Yadav flush on the nose, a nasty little period of play that saw the left-armer rush to the pavilion after injuring his weaker hand in the follow-through. Kartik Parihar, who filled in for Mangesh’s remaining delivery, had his game awareness questioned when he celebrated a wicket off the free-hit, oblivious to the no-ball just filed by the departee.
It was a rare light moment in a match marked by turbo-charged intensity. Backward square leg copped an earful from Ishan Afridi when he was slow to come out of the blocks, putting a skier down. He almost got rid of the resurgent Aman too if not for the wicketkeeper’s lousy work. Down on his knees, face buried in the turf, Afridi cut a sorry figure. The palette of roughhouse emotions soon had another entrant, the opener who ran a double immediately after undergoing a concussion test.
Ankush’s hundred celebration, featuring an angry roar and animated gestures towards the dressing room, suggested a chip on his shoulder. He started the season with a bang, against Malwa Stallions, and has continued his mighty march. Half the mountain had been scaled when he mistimed a flaying shot to cover, but the overdependence of Chambal Ghariyals on Ankush was evident as the finalists of the previous edition slipped from 129/1 to 150/5.
It was a good opportunity to sneak in some quiet overs from Saumy Pandey, a negative match-up whom Rajat protected versus Ankush. Meanwhile, Afridi entered the wickets’ coloumn with the dismissal of Tripuresh Singh to reaffirm his wicket-taking prowess in a format where golden arms are worshipped.
Case in point, Yuzvendra Chahal. His riposte to a six, more often than not, is to float the ball up above the eyeline once again. A roll of the dice that nudges the confident batter into a fate-tempting episode, and the fact that he is IPL’s highest wicket-taker means the result comes predominantly in Chahal’s favour.
Afridi was denied another breakthrough when Vikas Sharma, who’d executed a fine stumping despite being blinded by an advancing Harsh Dixit, fluffed the nick of dangerman Aman. The catching in MPT20 League has been rather shambolic, with the conversion rate of skiers at night low in particular. A lot of players among the current crop are probably getting their maiden exposure to cricket under lights, so as the tournament progresses and the boys are put through the motions, the fielding efficiency might turn green from a blazing red.
For now though, the dropped chances are wreaking havoc on the complexion of games. Having shared a partnership worth 73 off 31 with Rohit Kumar Gupta, Aman joined forces with Mayur Singh Patel, who managed a couple of boundaries against Afridi even as the bowler obliged to the 3-2 placement with tramline yorkers and slower bouncers that engage the longer part of the ground. Aman finished unbeaten on 60 off 28, pulling the rabbit out of the hat for Chambal Ghariyals after the equation read 73 off 52 with four wickets in hand.
A major contributor to their positioning at the top of the table, their groundwork is a bright spot in a tournament littered with errors of judgement. Speaking of which, not pushing hard enough for the review in the fourth over must have had Arpit twisting and turning in his bed as Ankush went on to set the perfect tone for an endeavour of biblical proportions.
