Shardul picked 4/34 to keep SRH to 190/9. ©AFP Shardul Thakur was not meant to spend the summer of 2025 travelling the length and breadth of India fulfilling content commitments and playing franchise cricket. After toiling for Mumbai in whites at the Ranji Trophy till the third week of February, the mercurial all-rounder was to take in the cool climes of Essex in South East England for his first-ever County stint in April-May. But then came a phone call from Zaheer Khan that altered the course. LSG were led to this desperate situation after mass injuries bogged them down even before the season began. Mohsin Khan was out for the season, Avesh Khan was a doubtful starter, Akash Deep was rehabilitating and their INR 11 Crore retention Mayank Yadav was nursing another injury that would keep him out for a while. So, LSG broke glass for emergency, and found themselves reaching out to the previously unfancied Shardul Thakur. Going for experience added up for LSG, whose few fully fit pace options were still wet behind the ears. But that Shardul was even available to be such a replacement player was the more intriguing aspect of the whole exercise. The impact player rule – renewed for a third instalment for the 2025 season – continues to consume multi-faceted players, both Indian and overseas. In the pre-IP era, Shardul was both effective and coveted. His ability to hit long from down the order was a luxurious add-on to his primary vocation of taking wickets. But outside of his first stint with CSK, the economy rate – first at Delhi Capitals in 2022 and then at KKR in 2023 – began to inflate. He was part of CSK’s grand plans of bringing the old band back together in 2024, but could only feature in 9 games before heading for the unknown of the mega auction. As it turned out, no paddles went up in November as teams looked elsewhere in search of specialists. “It was just one bad day in the auction, I didn’t get picked by any of the franchises… Like I always say, skills are always there, talent is always there. It’s just about the form and bad days, you have to go through it in cricket,” Shardul told the host broadcasters in Hyderabad. Developing a thick skin for such lows and getting on with what’s ahead of him has been the hallmark of Shardul’s topsy-turvy career. There are 83 international matches to his name, but none since the end of 2023. Yet, he has remained an unflappable asset for the most successful domestic side in the country, picking 35 wickets in 9 games in his most recent red-ball assignment. That he wasn’t anyone’s first choice in the IPL was also rendered moot by Shardul, as he took the field in Hyderabad on Thursday and quickly turned the knob on the narrative there. Just days ago, Rajasthan Royals were severely battered and bruised by SRH’s top-five – all of them striking at more than 200 (having faced at least 11 balls each). LSG’s arrival with a weakened bowling attack led by one who wasn’t in their plans until very recently meant SRH were primed to inflict more jaw-dropping damage. But this conventional wisdom died at the rhythmic footsteps of Shardul, who finished with figures of 4-34. In the process, he also became the first bowler this season to concede less than six runs in a single over to SRH, pulling it off in the 19th over. Having clocked a lot of miles as a cricketer, Shardul packs a lot of grit, with a dash of paradox. T20 of course is a game of risk, but you could sometimes argue that his wickets come off seemingly innocuous deliveries, perfectly capable of being dispatched for runs. But such nitpicking can’t possibly concern him as he’s ultimately got an opposition batter to leave the field while his teammates converge towards him. There’s no mandatory aesthetics to wicket-taking, as he showed across two deliveries in the third over of the fixture that clipped SRH’s wings and shaped the rest of the night. Abhishek Sharma’s pull found the only deep fielder protecting the square boundary, and then Ishan Kishan edged a length ball down the leg side to the keeper, even as the entire midwicket region was left open. “I think they [SRH batters] are coming hard at bowlers so why not bowlers go hard at them? So the talk was around what the plan should be and we collectively said let’s go hard at them, let’s take our chances,” Thakur said. Taking chances – with an outside the off-stump line and an off-cutter – gave Shardul two more wickets (Abhinav Manohar and Mohammed Shami) at the death and SRH a sub-200 total. The quick, authoritative chase for the first points of the season was followed by a beaming Sanjeev Goenka engulfing Rishabh Pant in a warm embrace, perhaps erasing the memories of the wretched night of flared tempers and raised voices on this very turf last May. ShareTweet
