Twitter was ablaze with one name: Rinku Singh. Some, like England captain Ben Stokes, or Ravichandran Ashwin, tweeted just the name — Rinku! — a “there, that’s the tweet” kind of thing where nothing else had to be said.
Some, like Virender Sehwag, offered more perspective: “All hail Lord Rinku Singh. 5 sixes in 5 balls in the last over of a run chase. One of the best last over hitting in a chase that you would ever see. #KKRvGT”
Australia’s Aaron Finch said he had “never seen anything like it”.
Zaheer Khan gave an even more comprehensive overview: “It seemed all over after Rashid’s hat-trick but 6,4,6,6,6,6,6 in the last 7 balls he faced by Rinku Singh has seen @KKRiders pull off one of the greatest heists in IPL history!”
One of the most nail-biting matches ever to be played in the IPL unfolded at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad when Kolkata Knight Riders chased down Gujarat Titans’ score of 204. In a match that saw GT’s Vijay Shankar rampage to a 24-ball 63, and Rashid Khan torpedo KKR with a 17th over hat-trick, Rinku did the impossible. With 29 runs needed off the final over for an improbable win, Umesh Yadav took a single off the first ball of the over and Rinku came to strike. He had no options really: Either he could hit five sixes off five balls, something that has happened only thrice before in IPL history, and score more runs than has ever been scored in the last over of a men’s T20 game, to win the game. Or he could get out trying.
Rinku hit five sixes. A full toss outside the left-hander’s off stump casually deposited over extra cover.
“Not in a winning cause, I’m sure,” said the TV commentator, and you could not blame him.
The second, another full toss, cleared off his legs and steered over the ropes.
The third, again a full toss outside the off stump, this time thumped with all his might, the ball sent soaring above the field.
The bowler, Yash Dayal, in a bid to compensate, sent down two short balls as his last two deliveries, and watched both slapped back over his head and beyond the ropes by Rinku, whose face registered no emotion, and whose shoulders were loose and relaxed as if he was on a stroll by some promenade.
“Extraordinary, extraordinary, I’ve never seen anything like this on a cricket ground before,” the commentator screamed into his microphone.
Cricket in India remains the field of dreams, that one sport which changes the fortunes of players in an instant. Because Rinku Singh knows what it feels like to have no choice. The third of five brothers, he was raised in a slum adjacent to a stadium in Aligarh, in a cramped, tin-roofed house with no running water. His father worked as delivery man for LPG cylinders, and the brothers pitched in. Rinku loved cricket, but his parents were afraid that his love for the game would make him unemployable.
“My father would wait with a stick to beat us up if he got to know that we had gone to play cricket,” Rinku said in an interview to KKR’s media team.
When he was 16, Rinku’s father got him a job as a sweeper at the stadium. This is where Rinku took a stand. It was going to be cricket or nothing. He found a mentor in the form of Mohammad Zeeshan, a coach at a local club who, seeing Rinku’s talent and financial situation, made the decision to fund everything from his gear to clothes to food.
By the time he was 18, Rinku was making his First Class debut for UP.
At 19, he had his first call up for the IPL, a season without a game for Punjab Kings. Then came the big break, as KKR picked him up for Rs 80 lakh the next season.
“The IPL selection totally changed my life,” Rinku said. “We had never seen money like that, and it removed all the obstacles, small or big, in our lives.”
It was only last season that the explosive batter from Aligarh finally got a proper look-in, playing seven games for KKR, scoring at a superb strike rate of 148.72 while still maintaining an average of just a shade over 34.
Three games down this season, Rinku looks ready for his biggest season yet, with the opportunity to carry a weak and inexperienced KKR batting line-up, struggling from the absence of their captain Shreyas Iyer (out for the season with an injury) and Shakib Al Hasan (out for a few games with an injury) and the loss of form of the fading Andre Russell.
Rinku has already made a start in that direction, and how.
Discover the latest Business News, Sensex, and Nifty updates. Obtain Personal Finance insights, tax queries, and expert opinions on Moneycontrol or download the Moneycontrol App to stay updated!
