Sandeep, not exceptional but effective

Chennai: Let’s hit 'pause' for a second. Sandeep Sharma is no Jasprit Bumrah - not at the top, not at the death, not today, not ever.  

The Rajasthan Royals’ skipper Sanju Samson must have gotten a bit carried away after the pacer showcased remarkable maturity and skill to shine, despite dew, during Qualifier 2 against the Sunrisers Hyderabad on Friday night. 

The Royals ended up losing the game by 36 haunting runs though the Sunrisers had put up but 175, but none of what happened after the first innings is to say Sandeep was not good at what was asked of him. 

He picked up two wickets - that of Travis Head and Heinrich Klaasen - for 25 runs from four overs to maintain his status as the small man who fells big trees. 

Sandeep, save for a couple of seasons, has always been good at what is asked of him, and yes, he has felled some rather big names in the process (ahem, Virat Kohli).  

He doesn’t hold a candle to the likes of the Bumrahs and his ilk, but he is the poster child for the demographic that the Indian Premier League was originally envisioned for. 

While the league was built for the stars and stardom, at its core it was but a platform to give young talent a chance to rub shoulders with the best in the business to accelerate their learning curve. 

Sandeep, soon after his tangible contributions to the World Cup-winning Indian Under-19 team of 2012 fame, entered the league with the Punjab Kings. In his first three seasons, he ended up with 39 wickets and earned his maiden call-up for the Indian team. 

Yeah, that lasted all of eight overs - two Twenty20 International games against Zimbabwe - and since he hasn’t had a sniff of the national side. 

At the domestic level, he continued to toil away, picking up 184 wickets from 54 matches, but his only real stage has been the IPL. 

In all the years Sandeep has tweaked his craft, remodelled his body and humbled himself to the point of the occasional resignation, he has had 137 wickets from 127 games at an average of 27.07, an economy of 7.89 and a strike rate of 20.60. But, it took him all of 17 editions to pick up his first fifer, and boy, what a time for it to come. 

At a time when Sandeep was slipping down the totem pole of preference, he saw himself snubbed for the first time in his IPL career in 2023. He wasn’t picked at the auctions but Prasidh Krishna’s injury meant the Royals needed someone to plug a void. 

As soon as he entered the league, you could tell Sandeep hadn’t spent all his time seething at the cards life had dealt him. Instead, he had used that time to add variations to his already enviable bag of cutters and slower ones. 

It showed on the evening of April 22 when he picked up five for 18 against the Mumbai Indians. 

Since then, he might not have been among the wickets, but he is nothing if not erudite with the ball in hand. 

On Friday night, those two dismissals of Head and Klaasen tell us all they need to about Sandeep’s journey into the meta world of slower ones. 

For Head, he bowled a split-finger slower bouncer, but it was peculiar in that he held the ball between his thumb and his index finger and pinched the ball out of his grip. Firstly, that requires remarkable strength to pull off as a bouncer. Secondly, to bring that up against one of the most dangerous batters this season on such an occasion is a testament to his mentality.

Klaasen, who by now had seen enough of the smorgasbord of slower ones Sandeep possesses, was waiting deep in his crease for a chance. Yeah, he got a spot-on 130-plus-kmph yorker instead. Again, it wasn’t about the pace. It was about where the ball landed and the surprise factor. 

Sandeep doesn’t have the pace, nor does he have the aesthetics which fit international cricket, but these shortcomings have forced him to use intellect to get one-up on some of the best batters in the world. That’s how he keeps himself relevant to the world of cricket.

Here’s the thing, though, Sandeep is not India material. He is about as good as he gets at this level, and that’s that. But, there is no shame in that. 

Just as there is none in the fact that R Vinay Kumar was one of, if not, the greatest domestic pacer India has ever seen. He just wasn’t built for the next level. Sad, but true.