IPL 2020: ‘I had doubts if I could ever face 140-plus kph fast bowling,’ Nitish Rana on how Mike Horn has helped him

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) batsman Nitish Rana revealed how motivational speaker Mike Horn’s lectures helped him overcome the fear of facing fast bowling. Rana added that Horn also helped him imbibe the art of learning from mistakes.

“When I personally met him and attended his lectures, I realised he was just not afraid of failures. He knows only how to gain [from them]. I tried to absorb this quality from him. If you take up anything with this mindset that you have nothing to lose, you can only gain and perform better,” Nitsh Rana was quoted as saying by kkr.in.

And it is not just Nitish Rana who has benefited from working with Mike Horn. Apart from being associated with KKR over the years, the South African explorer’s other assignments have been with India’s World Cup-winning squad in 2011 and also the German side that won the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

“I have been following Mike Horn on Instagram for a long time, even before I joined KKR. I looked up to him and often wondered how he managed to do so many things. When I was young, I used to get scared of pace and had doubts if I could ever face 140-plus kph fast bowling,” Nitish Rana further added.

Nitish Rana’s unwavering IPL graph

Nitish Rana was bought by KKR for INR 3.40 crore in the IPL 2018 player auction. Image Credits: India TV News

Rana can now not only play express pace, but he even toys with fast bowlers in the KKR jersey. And that he is constantly working on his mistakes and learning from them are testaments to the fact he has improved with each IPL season.

Nitish Rana has scored over 300 runs in each edition ever since he became a regular feature in the side – for Mumbai Indians in 2017 and KKR since then. He, however, had his best IPL season last year when he scored 344 runs at an average of 34.40. Rana can also bowl handy off-spin as was evident when he accounted for Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers off successive deliveries in IPL 2018.