Rahul Tewatia: The power hitter
Many times, we have seen when a six is required off the last ball, and a batsman strikes it off over the ropes to win a match for their team. But, not many times have we seen a game at a stake when the last 2-3 balls are left, and you need 6 in all of those to win the match.
Rahul TewatiaTill the time we have players like Rahul Tewatia, the hopes of fans are never going to die. Anything is possible at any point of time.
Last night's game of Gujarat Titans made everyone believe in hardcore talent and restored faith that a game is not lost or won until it's over. Two sixes in two balls were needed; that's when Rahul Tewatia came on strike to face Oden Smith, who was already bowling well with his line length. The ball suddenly became a piece of cake for Rahul Tewatia, who struck two back-to-back humongous sixes and all the commentators, fans and team went crazy. The winning roar from Rahul Tewatia was felt by every cricket fan while watching the match. That's what IPL does; it takes you on a thrill ride when you have least imagined it.
"Forget Titans, if Tewatia was on Titanic, even that wouldn't have sunk," former India batter Mohammad Kaif tweeted.
Before Rahul Tewatia, only two players pulled two sixes off the last two balls to win an IPL match for their teams. They were MS Dhoni (vs PBKS) in 2016 and Ravindra Jadeja (vs KKR) in 2020.
Rahul Tewatia: The Indian redemption artist
Rahul Tewatia first came to notice as a power-hitter during the 2021 edition of the Indian Premier League against the same franchise, Punjab Kings, when he put on a similar kind of show of sixes to make fans go crazy and win the game for the team. He pulled off a great escape match for Rajasthan Royal against Punjab Kings. After stuttering to 14 off 21 balls, he found his hands to smash Sheldon Cottrell for five sixes in an over. He missed six balls six-sixes streak by just one ball, which went to four. Else he was all in. Nevertheless, that deadly smoking attack took his team, Rajasthan Royals, to a victory they had thought they would lose.
Before the mega auction, Rajasthan Royals released Rahul Tewatia and then the new franchise Gujarat Titans decided to get this power hitter in their squad for a whopping INR 9 Crore. The player had his best performance display in IPL 2020, where he smashed 255 runs in 14 matches at the strike rate of 139.34. He pulled off 17 sixes and 13 boundaries in that season. IPL 2021 didn't go much as per expectation as he was averaging 15.50 runs in the 14 matches played. Therefore, he was dropped before mega-auctions. However, the player seems to have found his confidence back in this season as he is playing with an average of 67.00 runs and a strike rate of 191.43 in the three matches played till now.
His newly represented franchise, Gujarat Titans, hasn't lost any match so far. Their bowling unit was already in attacking mode, and now with Shubhman Gill and Rahul Tewatia playing swashbuckling shots with their bats are instilling confidence in the team. They will face Sunrisers Hyderabad next on 11th April and will be looking to maintain their winning momentum to stay in the top 4 of the points table.