India all-rounder Shardul Thakur has made quite a name for himself over the past several months. While it is Shardul’s express fast-bowling that has earned him a place in the Indian set up as one of the most mercurial players, his more-than-handy batting prowess has been a nice perk to aid the team’s overall balance.
In fact, not too long ago, it was Shardul’s twin-fifties at several important junctures of a test match that allowed India to comprehensively thwart England at the Oval. That performance even earned him the famous moniker, ‘Lord Thakur’. With the red-ball team lacking a specialist fast-bowling all-rounder, Shardul’s ability to fulfill that role has been a great boon to the Indian team.
Lord Thakur stars with an all-round show
In the recently concluded test match at Johannesburg, Lord Thakur was there to be the messiah of the team yet again. In the first essay of South Africa’s batting, Shardul scalped 7-wickets- picking up his maiden test fife-for in the process- to restrict the opponents to a slender lead.
But even more impressive was his crucial 28-run cameo, which helped India set a formidable 240-run target for the hosts. More than the runs scored, it was refreshing to see how maturely the 30-year-old applied himself at the crease. As Gautam Gambhir rightly pointed out on-air, “the shots he played were those of a proper, lower-order batsman”.
But it wasn’t just Gambhir who was all praise for Shardul and his all-round skills. Imran Tahir, one of Lord’s teammates in the Chennai Super Kings’ dressing room, had some interesting anecdotes to share about Shardul’s passion for batsmanship. Over on a talk show with Star Sports, Tahir revealed how Shardul would sometimes get angry when he didn’t get to bat in the CSK nets.
“Thakur very serious about his batting”- Imran Tahir
“He (Shardul Thakur) takes a lot of pride in his batting. He takes his batting very seriously. I play with him for Chennai and he does a lot of batting practice. On one or two occasions, he got angry when he didn’t get enough batting in the nets,” the former South Africa leg-spinner revealed. He further lauded Thakur for his match-awareness while batting.
“It shows that he is very keen regarding his batting. He made very vital runs in yesterday’s game. They are very important runs. The way this match will progress, you will see the value of those runs and I believe the positive way in which he played, it is his natural game and he got the reward for that as well,” he concluded.
While Lord Shardul was able to perform quite a few miracles himself, South Africa captain Dean Elgar nullified the performance with a gritty, tireless knock of 96-runs. The Southpaw batted patiently and faced 188-deliveries to guide his team to a crucial, series-leveling victory.
Brief Scores: South Africa 229 and 243/3 (Elgar 96*, Ashwin 1/26) beat India 266 and 202 by 7 wickets.