Follow UsThere is something about the Indian Premier League that makes you believe that daydreams can be turned into reality, and the story of Umran Malik and his rise in this extravaganza is nothing short of magical that is set to inspire millions of kids to take up the sport.
In a country with a population of a billion people and the land where cricket is considered to be the most-loved sport, it is hard to phantom that Umran did not play any competitive cricket until he was 17.
However, at the tender age of 18 and after hours of gruelling sessions in the sun for a year, Umran finally made it to the Under-19 team in the Cooch Behar Trophy and took the selectors and the cricket frenzy fans by surprise after clocking a speed over 150 on a consistent basis.
While he was making the noises for the right reasons in the domestic circuit, Umran was still an unknown prodigy on the biggest stage in the franchise cricket.
However, the 22-year-old was drafted into the Orange Army as a covid replacement for T Natarajan. Despite having a sedate start to his career in the shortest format of the game, Umran enthralled the fans and the cricketing pundits with his raw pace.
With the mega auctions slated for February, Sunrisers retained the services of Umran, much to the surprise of the fans. Despite being on the higher side of the economy, the right-arm pacer has scalped nine wickets in six innings, including a four-wicket haul against the Punjab Kings.
"At the end of the day, when you are bowling 150 kph an hour, you are likely to go for runs. He goes for a lot of runs behind the wicket. It's not like he is getting smashed down the ground or through the covers."
"You got to accept that his style of bowling, there's going to be a higher economy to that. And his role is to run in and express himself and be himself. We try and build a field around that so that he can express his fast bowler," Tom Moody said after SRH's win over KKR.
A detailed analysis of the above image gives us a fair idea about the opposition teams using the pace and bounce of Umran to accumulate quick runs.
With the sheer pace on offer, the batters have unleashed the uppercut and often smashed the youngster behind the wicket. However, despite the backing of the team management, there were question marks on the youngster's place in the playing XI.
And today, on a hot afternoon at the DY Patil Stadium, Umran was breathing fire by consistently bowling the short of length deliveries to rattle the batters on a sluggish wicket and repay the faith of the franchise.
Despite conceding a boundary off the first ball of his spell - a slash from Jitesh Sharma that raced to the third man fence - Umran bounced back to scalp his wicket on the last ball with a bouncer, thanks to his sheet pace.
While he did go for runs in the first three overs of his spell conceding 28 runs, he bounced back in a commanding fashion to pick up three-wicket and bowl a maiden in the final over of the innings to dismantle the Punjab Kings in their pursuit of an onslaught.
One of the highlights of his spell was the ability to consistently hit the stumps against the lower-order batters of the Kings, something he said he has worked on when the batters tend to shy away from the stumps due to his pace.
After two fuller deliveries that uprooted the off-stump on the fourth and the fifth delivery, the DY Patil Stadium was up on its feet chanting his name as he ran in for the hat-trick.
With all the drama around and witnessing the steady rise of the speedster, there was one person in the dugout who was beaming, the fast bowling coach of the side, Dale Steyn.
"I am kind of living through him, wishing I could do it, but it's all him at the moment. He is certainly somebody whom we should keep an eye on for the future," Steyn said in a conversation with Star Sports in one of the earlier games.
Well, he will be the one to watch out for in the future; however, tonight is all about celebrating a young talent crafting his way through the grinds of the sport to power the Orange Army to their fourth win of the season.