Mumbai, April 12: He was once tipped to be legendary Mahendra Singh's Dhoni's worthy successor in Indian cricket. He had impressed many as a talented and very promising wicket-keeper batter. Interestingly, he too is from Jharkhand, the home state of Dhoni.
He had dominated the white-ball format with merciless hitting at the top of the order as a left-handed opening batter. Even down the order, his strike-rate and scores were not bad either in the few opportunities he got to play for the national team.
His performance for his IPL franchise Mumbai Indians and domestic side Jharkhand has been rather impressive. In ODI World Cup 2023, Ishan Kishan did impress in the couple of chances he got.
But as K L Rahul returned from injury and proved his mettle as a keeper-batter, Ishan was slowly and surely turned out to be the man waiting for his chances. The top of the order was loaded with seniors or talents like Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill, where usually Kishan prefers to bat.
In case of Rahul, the case is bit different. Though he too has opened for India on many occasions in all three formats, but ever since his return from injury, he has been the pillar with Virat Kohli in the middle order.
That definitely had implications on Kishan's selection in Team India's playing XI. Obviously, he and his well wishers might have been upset. Not every youngster is Ajinkya Rahane, who had to wait for years for his chances. But again he was dropped on occasions where he deserved a place in playing XI, especially in the Test side.
Unlike Rahane, many youngsters of today may not have that endless patience and humility to wait for their next chance. Ishan Kishan being a consistent performer, perhaps felt the heat and that implied in his cricketing decisions as well.
When he recently showed bit lack of interest to play for his home team Jharkhand in a few domestic matches, he was reprimanded by the BCCI. He was even denied a central annual BCCI player contract.
But in Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024, Kishan has been impressive again. He scored a 23-balll half century on Thursday evening against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) on a winning cause.
Later, he said his splendid knock came after the realisation of about not putting himself under pressure due to things not in his hands.
It can be recalled that Kishan had taken a break from the game after pulling out of India’s Test tour of South Africa last year and didn’t play a single game for Jharkhand in the Ranji Trophy.
But after the MI_RCB match on Thursday, Kishan clearly stated, "There is nothing like that I want to prove to someone. I just have to go there and enjoy it because I've learned that you don't have to put pressure on yourself about things that are not in your hands. The uncontrollable is there, and you have to figure out what is controllable and uncontrollable.
"If I had been batting earlier, if I had been the old Ishan Kishan, if they had been good bowling in the first two overs, he would have come under a little pressure. But with time, I have learned that 20 overs is a massive game. You can take that time. Again, you can believe in yourself and move forward," said Kishan in the post-match press conference.
Quizzed specifically about the T20 World Cup and Kishan said he wants to be in the present for now. "About the World Cup, it is not in my hands and I am taking things very easy right now. You have to take one match at a time. One needs to understand that a lot is not in the hands of the players. It’s a very big tournament and you do not want to overstep. I am just taking one game at a time and however I can help the team, let’s do it."
Worth mentioning that Kishan finally returned to competitive cricket in February when he played for Reserve Bank of India in the DY Patil T20 Cup in Navi Mumbai and spoke about the things which he did during his break from the game, apart from practising alongside Hardik Pandya in Baroda.
"I was practicing as well as I could. I had taken off and when you take an off, a lot of it is gets spoken about on social media. What we can do is that if you have taken time for yourself, use it the best way possible for yourself," he said.
Asked about his mindset during the chase, the wicketkeeper batter said, "At the Wankhede, whenever you play, and the wicket is good, you always look to score more than 200. It's not about scoring 220; if we have a good start, we look to get as many runs as possible. So that is the thing. You can't set a certain target for your team or yourself.
"You just have to keep batting or keep looking at the total and what other bowlers are doing. So you keep planning. If the wicket falls, the planning will change. If our partnership is good, the planning will be different. It's a different story for us right now regarding how we take this thing. Our plan is not to set a total for ourselves. Let's just look at the situation and play our best cricket." (With IANS support)
