Mumbai, April 29: While criticism has mounted over spinner Rashid Khan’s inability to provide the sucker-punch blow with his bowling for his franchise, Gujarat Titans, in the current edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), there’s no denying that he what he hasn’t been able to accomplish with his bowling, the 23-year-old is trying to accomplish with the bat this year.
The 23-year-old has played match-winning shots for Gujarat against CSK (40 out of 21) and SRH (31 not out of 11) in tremendous pressure situations. However, the leading leg player has picked just eight wickets in eight matches with an economy of 7.09 in the current IPL season for the team led by Hardik Pandya.
Rashid said that while his main role will remain as a bowler, he has been improving his batting ability over the last 2-3 years, especially as a finisher like Mahendra Singh Dhoni, to solidify his franchise in the future. order.
“For the last two or three years, I’ve been working on my hitting. I’m confident in myself that I should be there and finish for the team,” Rashid said after his attack with the bat against SRH at the Wankhede in April. . 27, which Gujarat won by five wickets in a thriller.
“I have those skills and talent, but it was just about the belief in myself, that I could finish. The best thing is that I have more opportunities here on this team to hit.” Going up against the old franchise of his, Rashid showed just how devastating his batting can be, hitting an unbeaten 31 off just 11 balls as Gujarat completed an improbable 195 chase to stop SRH’s winning streak.
Rashid came in with the Titans 140/5 in 16 overs, all five wickets falling to the beat of Umran Malik. It took 56 of the last four overs, but in Rashid and Rahul Tewatia, Gujarat had two men familiar with conjuring wins out of thin air. Rashid finished off with three sixes on four balls, the last two coming off the final two balls when nine were needed for victory.
There was a hint of MS Dhoni’s helicopter and a bit of a hockey player’s drag-flick, but the end product was all Rashid. “The snake throw” is what he calls it, because of the way the wrists uncurl and strike.
On his lackluster delivery (his four overs leaked 45 runs, Rashid’s third worst figures in IPL history), the player said: “I think I didn’t deliver as well as I should have. I delivered four-five poor deliveries and got punished and that’s something I had in mind. On a wicket like this, you can’t lose your line and length, and that’s something I’ve done.”
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— The story has been published from a cable source with no changes to the text.