Sunday 05 / May / 2024
When India needed just two runs from 46 balls to register a nine-wicket victory against Zimbabwe at the Harare Sports Club ground on Saturday, the opening game of the three-match One-day International series was on course for a predictable, uninspiring end. Then, a fleeting moment of excitement that was completely out of the picture until then transformed the mood of the sparse crowd in the stands.
Without that single stroke of delight from Kannaur Lokesh Rahul, who sent the third ball from Hamilton Masakadza in the 43rd over of the Indian innings flying over the long-on boundary for the only six of the match to post a century on his ODI debut, there would have been nothing much to talk about the Test-match-like proceedings of the day.
The beauty of the moment was that until it really happened there was no hint of it coming. At the end of the 39th over, Rahul was on 87, and India, at 156 for the loss of one wicket, were 13 runs short of the target. Rahul faced five deliveries of the next over to score one run, managed two more from the following over to move on to 90, and two more in the next to reach 92.
That was when Masakadza walked to the top of his run-up to try if he could hold India back from scoring four runs at least until the next over. And when Rahul flicked the second ball of the over to fine leg to add two more runs to his account, it was the perfect time to hit a six, but few among the sparse Indian crowd gathered in the stands may have been ready for the moment. By then they were so used to the slow, singles way forward chosen by Rahul and Ambati Rayudu that hoping for a big hit off probably the last ball of the match was as unnatural as asking MS Dhoni if he would retire from cricket after the Zimbabwe series.
The 168-run total posted by Zimbabwe was too small even for the second-string Indian team, but the way the less-celebrated guys went about the task was painful. Rayudu took eight balls to open his account, scored just nine runs from his 36 balls, was beaten three times in the 12th over bowled by Chamu Chibhabha, stayed cool without trying even once to express his frustration in any aggressive, rash intent, and waited till the 17th over to post his first four, which was off the 37th ball he faced. There could have been nothing more frustrating for Makhaya Ntini than the slow killing delivered by the inexperienced Indians who he had threatened before the start of the game with an under-the-carpet deal.
While all this was cool for skipper Dhoni to watch from the dressing room, the small crowd at the stadium was disappointed. There was nothing for the home fans to cheer about in the morning as the Zimbabweans failed to tackle the Indian bowlers, and, in the afternoon, as Rayudu and Rahul went about the task leisurely, the kids who came with vuvuzelas looked bored having watched nothing inspiring to blow the plastic trumpets.
Midway through the game, fan frustration got to a stage where they settled for anything that came their way to cheer themselves up, so when Rayudu hit a four in the 22nd over, the Zimbabwean crowd shook their hips as if he reached some milestone. Of course, a four, under the circumstances, was quite big.
Rahul was the hero of the day. At 24, he’s a babe, still at an impressionable age, and the influence senior guys like Dhoni and Virat Kohli have on him is visible in the way he confesses his love for tattoos or his desire to play around with his hair. Nothing wrong with that, but if he is ready for a bit more of the maturity needed to transform himself into a bigger bloke, now is the time. The IPL offered him the opportunity to share space with Kohli and AB de Villiers, arguably the best in the business at the moment in all the three formats of the game, and now that India are looking for new stars to take the team forward, he is the right man at the right time.
The writer is a freelance contributor based in India. All the views and opinions expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not reflect those of Times of Oman
