Friendship over with Purple, Sunil Narine is coming for the Orange Cap

Something changed about Sunil Narine on Tuesday, April 16.

During the second innings of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR)'s IPL 2024 match against Rajasthan Royals (RR), he trapped Rovman Powell in front with a quick arm-ball and sprinted while appealing with his back to wicketkeeper Phil Salt.

As the umpire raised the slow finger of death, Narine offered a big arm raise and a passionate shout of celebration and thumped Salt's gloves down. It was a massive wicket in the context of the game but Narine has taken many massive wickets at the Eden and it's hard to remember the last time he celebrated like this for one.

Clean bowls, LBWs, caught-and-bowled - any dismissal against any batter, and the best you could get out of him for the past decade was half a smile. Early generations of KKR fans might find it even harder to believe that this was the third such show of intensity from the man they learned to associate with a monk.

And the answer to this change perhaps lies in the first of those three celebrations. That came when, in the previous innings, Narine became only the third KKR batter after Brendon McCullum and Venkatesh Iyer to score a hundred.

As he slogged Yuzvendra Chahal to the mid-wicket boundary for a four to get to 100 off just 49 balls in the 16th over, Narine ran to the other end, jumping and pumping his bat in the air, sweat dripping and his mohawk flying.

"Cricket is all about batting, so if you can contribute with the bat, as an individual it's more pleasing," he had said a couple of matches ago when he scored his first 80, then his highest IPL score.

For a long time, Narine hasn't been at his wicket-taking best. He has a ridiculous economy rate of 6.88 this season but because most batters are looking to play him out defensively, his wickets have dried up.

For someone with as big a history of match-winning performances as him, that's not an acceptable compromise. Batting, in that regard, has been a new lease of life for a slowly fading career. But that's not it.

Many people close to him have spoken in the past about how he was always a decent batter, even before he became an off-spinner. But it was around 2014 when his father, Shahid Narine passed away that he started taking his batting seriously.

"When he passed away, I made a pledge that I was going to try and do more with the bat because he always said that I can bat and he always wanted me to show that I can bat," Narine told KKR in 2021.

Those two years of hard work came to use in the 2016 Big Bash League when Melbourne Renegades opened with him when Dwayne Bravo was unavailable. In 2017, KKR faced a similar issue with Andre Russell's absence and to make up for the lost power down the order, Gautam Gambhir gambled with Narine at the top.

The gamble was a big hit as Narine would come out as an expendable wicket, play a good knock after every few games, and help KKR get good starts. Narine himself admitted that teams failed against him because they didn't know what to bowl.

But slowly, as they started to take him seriously they figured out ways to slow him down, and make him waste deliveries before getting him out and KKR had to bin the plan because it became counter-productive.

In 2024, as Gambhir returned to the fold, he re-opened that file and instead of horrors, Narine brought out the vintage.

How Sunil Narine has changed his targets

The early thing that bowlers seemed to figure out was that Narine of circa 2017-2020 was a slogger. His previous highest score before IPL 2024 was 75 (36) against Punjab Kings in 2018. In that innings, his most productive shot according to ESPNcricinfo, was the "slog". Six of his nine boundaries as well as all of his four maximums came on the leg-side, even as most of his singles came on the off-side.

He was, as expected, batting like a tailender. So, in response, bowlers came up with two broad plans: continuously bowl wide of the crease when you have to cut his boundaries or bowl short on his body when you want to get him out.

Now, here's Narine's counter-punch, delayed by a couple of years: On Tuesday, his most productive shot was the "straight drive". He took singles all around the park, but only one of his six maximums was hit on the leg side; all others were smashed over the bowlers. He hit 13 boundaries and eight came in the 'V'.

After getting out of the testing first two overs, Narine constantly and relentlessly waited for balls to be in his arc, which was on the stumps or just outside. Whenever the RR fast-bowlers tried to attack his stumps, he replied with nicely-timed drives down straight or through the off-side and completely ignored the mid-wicket fence.

His weakness against short ball was still visible (It's only been a few years of serious batting, so he isn't close to Rohit Sharma yet). And unlike the common perception, Trent Boult and Avesh Khan used that tactic well in the first two overs.

But Narine manages to escape by doing two things well. He made a bit of room making sure that the bowlers couldn't target his body as well as they liked. It didn't get him runs but helped him survive. When Kuldeep Sen, RR's quickest bowler, did manage to cramp him on the leg side, Narine showed the second thing.

The change in Sunil Narine's technique from 2018 (R) to 2024. (PC: BCCI)

The image on the right is from 2018. Look at that backlift and compare it to the image on the left which is from Tuesday. He has worked on his batting and is now holding his bat higher and closer to his body.

This helped him tonk Sen over deep square leg because unlike in 2018, he didn't get late on the shot as his bat had a smaller distance to travel for the pull shot.

Now, high backlift is a double-edged sword sometimes because it can make the batter late for flick shots to the leg side. But, the only time Narine really slogged on Tuesday was against Chahal to reach his ton, the rest of everything was straight.

And in that shot against, there's a hint of another change - this time in the mindset. Between 2017-2023, Narine had a strike rate of 170.5 against pacers and 194.6 against spinners. However, he only played 185 balls of spin in this period, compared to 748 of pace. That is, spin made less than 20% of his total balls faced.

In 2024, Narine has a strike rate of 173.4 against pacers in 109 balls and 226.8 to spinners in 38 balls. Now, already, spin is making up for 26 percent of his total balls faced. It seems like a small change but that six percent extra balls adds runs at a strike-rate higher by almost 50 points for KKR which could be massive for the season.

Knowing that he has a better match-up against spinners, he is happy not to go madly after the pacers in the powerplay and wait for the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin and Yuzvendra Chahal to come on. When they did on Tuesday, it was obvious that he was reading them better and neither of them seemed to have any clue on how to stop his assault at the sight screen over their heads.

These are not signs of a slogger. Although KKR lost the match on the last ball, his knock was a master class on how to bat at a small ground with a true pitch, which is what we are seeing more and more of in IPL 2024. Thanks to him, KKR can confidently say that they play with 10 batters, which simply feels scary.

Narine has never won the Purple Cap despite being in the race for it for years. Now, he's third in the list of the Orange Cap race with 276 runs, 85 behind Virat Kohli who has played one more knock.

After the innings, Narine was asked how he'd have reacted if someone told him before the season that this would happen.

"I would have taken it as a joke because I haven't opened in such a long time or did much with the bat in the years past," he said with a smile.

Perhaps he still isn't taking his batting seriously - which is not a bad thing in T20s -- the work going on behind the scenes is not of a tailender or a pinch-hitter.

"It’s the result of his sheer hard work at the nets," his teammate, Rinku Singh said after the match. "I’ve just noticed one change - he’s more patient now. Earlier, he used to swing his bat to every ball, now he has restrained himself and playing according to the merit of the ball. He is batting thoughtfully and wisely.”

He's chipping in with wickets, not letting opponents' biggest hitters score boundaries, showing what he can do with the bat himself, and doing it all with a reinvigorated smile on his face. It's all just like how his father might have dreamt of.

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With inputs from Venkatesh Ravichandran.