It is KKR's second match of IPL 2023. Venkatesh Iyer is opening the batting alongside Rahmanullah Gurbaz against RCB. It's the second ball of the fourth over and Iyer hasn't had much of the strike. In the six balls that he has faced though, he has managed just three runs. On the other end, Gurbaz is striking the ball sweetly, having contributed 23 of the 26 runs on the board.
Left-arm medium-pacer David Willey runs from over the wickets and bowls a textbook in-swinger to Iyer which comes in a long way to the left-hander. Iyer tries to negotiate the good length delivery off the back foot but is beaten all ends up.
Timber everywhere.
There are many ways for a batter to get out, but the way Iyer is bowled, getting beaten by at least six inches, it raises a bigger question: does he belong?
Early Success
Venkatesh Iyer took the IPL by storm in 2021 when he was picked midway by Kolkata and ended up being one of the most successful batters for them, smashing 370 runs from 10 games at over 40 and a strike rate of almost 130, with four half-centuries at the top of the order.
The franchise responded in kind and retained Iyer for IPL 2022. The Madhya Pradesh batter who had initially been picked at his best price of Rs 20 lakhs ended up being retained for an eye-watering Rs 8 crores - a jump of 40 times on the base price.
It still wasn't anywhere close to Hardik Pandya's record 110-time jump from his 2015 fee of Rs 10 lakhs to Rs 11 crores in 2018, but it was still something.
Comparisons with Gill
Moreover, Kolkata had shown immense faith in the batting all-rounder by retaining him when they couldn't keep Shubman Gill who was (and remains) the next big thing in Indian cricket.
Thus began the never-ending comparisons and incessant trolling on social media.
What did not help matters was that Iyer had a terrible run of form in IPL 2022, managing just 182 runs from 12 matches at 16.55 and a strike rate of 107.69. That's second-season syndrome tested to the hilt.
On the contrary, Gill went on to smash 483 runs from 16 games for Gujarat Titans and played an instrumental role in taking GT to the title in their very first year. That the talented opener hit the winning runs was the icing on the cake.
As Iyer fell out of favour from Team India after a couple of impressive knocks lower down the order in the India Blue shortly after his debut, Shubman Gill rocketed to fame and success with consistent (and more importantly, extremely good-looking) runs.
The stats machinery had to work over time to churn out Gill's umpteen record-breaking performances, one after another. Gill's scintillating 208-run knock against New Zealand in Hyderabad made him only the fifth Indian batter to notch up an ODI double ton and also the fifth Indian batter to bring up a century in each of the three formats.
To add to that, he became the youngest international cricketer to score a double century in ODIs and the joint-second fastest to 1,000 ODI runs alongside the great Imam-ul-Haq.
How on earth do you compete with that?
Overcoming a Career-Threatening Injury
As if destiny was playing a prank on Iyer, he broke his ankle during the last Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy, six months ago, and the doctors were not sure if he would be able to take the cricket field ever again.
"Injury does not just take a toll out of your body physically but mentally as well. It makes you go through a lot... Post my injury, coming back and playing was something that made me smile. A lot of doctors have told me I would not be able to walk or run as fast as I normally would. I would feel very disappointed," Iyer recalls his low phase after the injury.
The 28-year-old was in a race against time to be fit for the ongoing IPL and had to put in hours and hours of back-breaking effort to speed up the recovery process. By virtue of his hunger to be back on the field and help from KKR assistant coach Abhishek Nayar, he was back up and running before The Big Dance.
Showing His Class
The ripe fruit of Iyer's hard work came in the form of a classy 51-ball 104 against Mumbai Indians on 16 April as the batsman brought up only the second century of IPL 2023 after Harry Brook. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to take KKR to victory but was worth the Player of the Match award at the least.
Iyer finally ended KKR's dry century spell, becoming only the second batsman after Brendon McCullum (who did it 15 years ago) to notch up a ton in the purple and gold of Kolkata.
Interestingly, it was McCullum who brought Iyer into the side in the second half of IPL 2021 and stamped his retention for the mega auctions before IPL 2022. Certainly, he would have been muttering 'I told ya' under his breath while watching Iyer smash the MI bowlers to all parts of the park on telly.
It deserves mention that Iyer's fortunate yet magnificent ton did not come on a sleeping beauty as all his fellow batters found it hard to even hit the ball off the square with the exception of Andre Russell. In fact, due to the two-paced nature of the red soil wicket at the Wankhede, no other KKR batter had found the boundary apart from Iyer at the 10-over mark.
What stood out during the knock was Iyer's array of shots. There appears to be no chink in his armour as such, with the exception of dealing with express pace, but that troubles almost all mortals.
Iyer is proficient against both pace and spin (mystery or no mystery) and can tackle both full length and short deliveries from the quicks. In fact, he seems to have attained mastery over dispatching the slower delivery – which is among the trickiest to counter in T20 cricket.
Despite being shunted up and down the batting order and substituted in and out of matches, Iyer has managed to snaffle the Orange Cap with 234 runs from five matches at 46. Although Gill has similar numbers, the left-hander's strike rate of 170.80 is way superior to Gill's 139.88. What's more, Iyer has shown pretty darn well that he belongs on the IPL's big stage.
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