‘Mayank Yadav was born to terrorise batters, pace can't be bought in market’: Kagiso Rabada
It took just three deliveries for Mayank Yadav in IPL 2024 to catch the world's attention. And also Kagiso Rabada's. The South Africa fast bowler, however, didn’t need the confirmation of the speed gun which read 150.1 kph. The way Jonny Bairstow was late trying to clip the back-of-a-length delivery was proof enough.
That's one thing with fast bowlers. They smell the other's presence from far away. And
Rabada was sitting in the Punjab Kings (PBKS) dugout barely 40 metres from Mayank's run-up marker.
For the next 10 minutes,
Mayank would beat Bairstow and Shikhar Dhawan - two batters with more than 22,000 international runs - with sheer pace and eventually dismiss the England white-ball opener with a 143 kph bouncer. The Lucknow Super Giants pacer would hurry two more PBKS batters - Prabhsimran Singh and Jitesh Sharma - into the pull shot. He finished with
3/27 and walked away with the Player-of-the-Match award on IPL debut.
The ball banged into the centre of the pitch at a fair clip rose awkwardly, giving no time to the batter to get into position to even attempt, let alone successfully execute, a horizontal bat shot. Ball ballooning in the air for the fielders to have a feast. Mayank's modus operandi has been simple and it has worked again and again.
It's just raw pace, man," Rabada
told Hindustan Times. "He is really sharp, that's obvious. It's a massive weapon. He will always rush the batsman. And he's showing some good control too."
Mayank would prove that his outing against PBKS was not a one-off by coming up with
an even better show against Royal Challengers Bengaluru on Tuesday night. This time, his victims were Cameron Green, Glenn Maxwell and Rajat Patidar. He was beating the Australians in their own game.
After being softened by two missiles of over 155 kph, Green hit a boundary but was left high and dry by a 146 kph delivery pitched in his half, for a change. The ball hit the top of off-stump and flew to the boundary. Maxwell and Patidar went the Bairstow, Prabhsimran and Jitesh way. Futile attempts to take on the short ball led to their wickets.
“Mayank Yadav doesn't need to change the working formula. It's about having the right balance of trying to be a step ahead…”, said Kagiso Rabada.
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