Ruturaj Gaikwad - classy, crafty and consistent

The moment someone mutters Ruturaj Gaikwad’s name, an image of his batting gets formed. A batter who caresses the ball, does not try to hit it too hard and just makes batting look easy. His physique lends to that narrative as well. He does not have big biceps like Marcus Stoinis, or forearms as powerful as MS Dhoni.

In today’s day and age, especially with social media, that, at times, gets mistaken for an inability to bat at the tempo T20 cricket demands. Most of it, of course, is dumbfounded because Gaikwad, simply put, is one of the best Indian T20 openers going around.

But, you know, sometimes, what meets the eye is what forms a perception in the mind (rightly or wrongly). And the Chennai Super Kings captain, thus, is seemingly left to prove that he belongs in the highest echelon of this fast-paced format, every time he bats.

Ruturaj Gaikwad followed up his hundred with 98 against SRH

The last two times he has batted, he has made those questioning his ability and strike rate look quite silly. A hundred against the Lucknow Super Giants was followed by an equally enterprising 98 against the SunRisers Hyderabad on Sunday.

The second, in particular, was a proper test of temperament. With CSK having lost days ago, he would have been under pressure, especially as captain. Then, there was the matter of wanting to put enough runs on the board against a marauding SRH batting unit.

The sweltering humidity was not easy to tide over either, and even though he did seem to run out of steam towards the end, it was not before he had given his side the impetus to get up to a 200-plus total, which on a tacky surface, gave CSK plenty to bowl at, and was another glowing assessment of his temperament.

In both of these knocks, Gaikwad, despite ticking along at a very healthy rate, barely broke into a sweat (metaphorically, of course), all while negating tricky conditions, where the ball stopped and held on the surface.

The CSK skipper has faced 114 balls in his last two innings. Of these, only six have cleared the fence. His primary run-scoring USP has been fours, and while that may seem the lesser fashionable gig at this juncture, his risk-free approach has allowed CSK to keep wickets in hand and unleash when the time has been right.

Most of the fours Gaikwad has hit have been with a straight bat, which just shows how gifted a timer he is. Some (read all) of the cover drives and the square drives have been drool-worthy, and worth the admission fee alone. The gap finding has been just as impressive (if not more), meaning that he has gotten full value for the strokes he has played.

He is, in many ways, like a surgeon in the IPL, carefully calculating the angles, knowing what degree of incision is needed to penetrate a particular area, and how deep he can use the scalpel (his bat in this case) to get the desired result.

This is so unlike the crash, bang, wallop the IPL has been seeing over the past few weeks, where top-order batters have tended to plant their front foot and swing for the hills. Neither approach, of course, is wrong. Nor is either the only right method.

But for Gaikwad to be very relevant at a time when everything around him is going along at a million miles per hour, is more revealing than any of his eye-catching stroke-play could ever be.

These runs, apart from pushing his case for national selection (more on that later), will also give CSK belief. The belief that they can now bat any opposition out of the game and that they can, even on tricky surfaces, post totals that will give them a fighting chance.

This might sound a bit of a cliché. But when Gaikwad does well, CSK usually do well. And he is now doing as well as anyone else in the IPL, and that should count for something.

This brings us to what India do about him and if they take him to the T20 World Cup. That, as a famous teammate of Gaikwad would say, is beyond his control. The case now, though, is as compelling as it has ever been.

In international cricket, Gaikwad may not have been as consistently successful as he is in the IPL. But in 2023, he struck at more than 147 (147.17) in T20Is and averaged 60.83. This, by the way, was on the back of a sustained run of games, which as CSK know very well, brings the best out of the right-handed opener.

There are several other factors in play, however. India, as things stand, seem intent on relying on established names to open the innings and that means only one top-order spot is up for grabs, which will likely be taken by Yashasvi Jaiswal, who adds a left-handed option.

Then, there is a school of thought that Gaikwad is very similar in terms of approach to Virat Kohli, although the former has scored more runs than Kohli in the IPL since 2021 and has a strike rate considerably higher (140.1 versus 131.9).

That, however, is a debate for someone else to tuck into. And at present, it is not the five-time champions’ headache either.

But the fact that Gaikwad, despite seemingly being this old-school, almost traditional batter in the hustle and bustle of T20 cricket, is evoking conversations of being considered among the very best, only reiterates that he is special.

He is crafty, classy, and consistent. That surgical precision can still trump brawn and raw power. And that there is still a place for this brand of batting. Only if you are as good as Ruturaj Gaikwad, though.