Rahul Tripathi: Frozen out at the start, now a burning flame in SRH's batting volcano

Rahul Tripathi has played five games for SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) this IPL season. Two of those have been against his former employers, the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). In each of those five innings, he has gotten into double digits. He has a strike rate over 150, and yet, there was a time when he was considered dispensable by his franchise.

That time was not long ago. It was not until May 19 that Tripathi was recalled into the fray, having previously featured in SRH’s opening fixture and then their away trip to Mullanpur on April 9 as an Impact Player.

Now, he has played three games in succession and has had a positive impact in all of those matches. Suddenly, he seems indispensable and SRH, who had planned much of the season without him, now seemingly cannot do without him.

What has changed?

Well, for starters, the runs have started to flow. In these last three encounters, he has managed 125 runs at a strike rate of 183.8. Apart from the obvious deviation in numbers, though, not a lot has changed. Yes, his execution has been better but the intent, the mindset to keep playing his strokes from the moment he walks out, to sacrifice his wicket without worrying about his runs, has not.

For batters of such ilk, success, sometimes, is irregular. When they get it right, however, they provide the continuity teams such as SRH so frequently crave. What also probably goes against Tripathi is how he often looks like a cat on a hot tin roof while at the crease.

He is fidgety, does a million movements per second, and always seems on edge. When the ball is coming down to him, though, he has his eyes on it and that is all that matters while batting.

Rahul Tripathi hardly featured at the start of the season for SRH

At the start of the season, maybe Tripathi was too preoccupied with other stuff that he forgot about the principle of watching the ball. His first innings this season was a run-a-ball 20 against KKR. The middling strike rate was not for a lack of trying, instead, it was because he just could not get the ball away.

His second knock, coming in as an Impact Player against the Punjab Kings after SRH’s powerplay struggles, saw him used in a middle-order role, which he is not quite used to. He scrapped his way to 11 of 13 before being dismissed off the 14th ball he faced.

These innings also came in the backdrop of a lackluster 2023 campaign, where he scored 273 runs at a strike rate of 128.17. This was preceded by him making his India debut and giving a largely good account of himself.

As things stand, his most recent international outing saw him smash 44 off just 22 balls but unless anything drastic happens, that appears to be his last international game too.

He paid the price for a poor IPL season last year, despite the general message from the selectors being that IPL form is not the deal-breaker for national selection. For cricketers like Tripathi, who prioritize quick runs, sticking to the team’s role, being fearless and not just concentrating on individual milestones, perhaps that does not apply.

If this particular statement has gotten you thinking about why so much went so wrong for Tripathi in such a short space, the 33-year-old’s head would have been spinning too. And while that does not justify his dip in form and why SRH left him out, it does shed light on the entire sequence.

Now, all that seems to be behind it. And that is all that counts.

If you had any doubt, you’d only need to watch his cameo against the Rajasthan Royals. It lasted just 15 balls but he ransacked 37 runs. All of them came inside the powerplay, and it included a stunning assault on R Ashwin, who was supposed to be RR’s trump card at Chepauk.

Tripathi took him down with such methodical precision that even Ashwin was rattled. That does not happen regularly, and the fact it did, is a glowing assessment of Tripathi. His cameo allowed SRH to slow down exponentially in the middle overs and still post a score of 175.

A game earlier, SRH found themselves in all sorts of early strife against KKR in Qualifier 1. Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head fell cheaply, while Nitish Kumar Reddy could also not perform his usual rescue act. Tripathi, though, kept ticking along at a very healthy rate, and had it not been for a massive misunderstanding with Abdul Samad, he might have taken SRH closer to 180-190, as opposed to the 159 they ended up with.

What shone in both of these knocks was how fearless he was. He saw wickets going down around him and while some would have rather consolidated at that stage, Tripathi chose the other option: to counter-attack.

This ploy, of course, has risk attached to it. When it does come off, though, it allows teams to transfer pressure back and create a run cushion that can then be used later in the innings, or can be maximized to put up an above-par total.

Sounds very much like what SRH have anyway been doing all season, right?

That is primarily why Tripathi fits into this side like a glove. Having opened previously in the IPL and domestic cricket, he can handle himself against the new ball, and his hitting against spin is as cultured as anyone in that line-up not named Heinrich Klaasen.

It is a shame that it took SRH so long to realize it, but it seems they have done so just before it was too late. Players like him, because of the chances they take, will have failures but it is about how many good days they can assure the team.

That was also why the 2016 champions broke the bank to acquire Tripathi in the first place in 2022. Back then, he was this up-and-coming ball-striker, almost like the next top-order India batter off the rack. Things may not have gone as per that particular plan, but for SRH, he can still do a mighty fine job.

Especially in the final, where he will be up against his old team, and two mystery spinners he will likely have decoded more than most, having batted against them in the nets previously. But more than that, SRH need Tripathi’s personality in the final.

That fearlessness, that devil-may-care attitude, that it-does-not-matter-if-I-get-out-as-long-as-I-fulfil-my-role ideology, and that hunger to show he still belongs to this stage.

Six games in an IPL season, especially for a batter of his class, seem too less. But there is a high chance that 50 percent of them will have come against KKR, and an even greater chance of him having a 100 percent impact if SRH conquer their final frontier.

He may have been frozen out at the start, but he is now a burning flame in SRH’s batting volcano. Well and truly indispensable. And a player SRH simply cannot do without. Like he was always meant to be, and like he deserves to be.