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Follow UsHumans are obsessed with early success, especially when it’s sports. Prodigies seduce us with their effervescent genius and shiny promise. The late bloomers meanwhile, are stuck in the giant wilderness between glory and oblivion. Good enough to be in the game, but not swanky enough to draw attention to them.
Therefore, when a late bloomer makes it to the spotlight, the rhythm of the sporting excellence conveyor belt is broken. Rajat Patidar, your quintessential late bloomer from Madhya Pradesh, didn’t only break the rhythm with his performances. He broke the entire conveyor belt by the sheer force of his runs.
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One look at Patidar, and you can already see the years spent in domestic cricket on his tanned face and sedate demeanour. After all, 4000 runs (including 12 hundreds) at an average of 45.97 weren’t scored in an air-conditioned room. Because of those runs, he’s an Indian player, having made his debut for the team in ODIs.
This journey for the 30-year-old has been a long, winding road, but the milestones he achieved and the qualities he showed during that have earned him an elusive Test call-up.
For Madhya Pradesh in the Ranji Trophy, Rajat Patidar has mostly batted at number three and four, and his reputation has been of a batter who bats big in knockout games and on difficult turning tracks.
In 2022, the season when Madhya Pradesh won the Ranji Trophy, Patidar was the second-highest scorer, with 658 runs in nine innings at an average of 82.25. 323 of those 658 runs came in the knockouts, including a match-winning 122 against Mumbai in the final.
Earlier that season, in what was a shortened group stage in the Ranji Trophy due to COVID, Patidar scored 335 runs in just four innings to ensure that Madhya Pradesh made the knockouts. He played on turning tracks, but his skills against the spinners triumphed all that was thrown at him.
Sweeps, pulls, backfoot nudges — everything you associate with a top-class spin batter was visible in him during that season. Arguably, there was only one batter better than him that year in Ranji Trophy, and that batter, Sarfaraz Khan, is there with him in the Indian squad at the moment.
Between these two legs of the Ranji Trophy in 2022, he also played the IPL season, where he played one of the best knocks ever in an IPL knockout and became the first uncapped Indian to hit a century (112*) in playoffs. In that season, the Indore-born scored 166 runs at strike rate of 172.9 against spinners and hit them for a boundary every 4.6 balls.
That ability to score tough runs was visible in the unofficial Test he played against the England Lions just recently. The English team had a mammoth lead after scoring 553/8 and bundling out India A for just 227.
But guess what?
Of that 227, 151 runs were scored by a certain Madhya Pradesh batter and that too in just 158 balls. The next best score was 23.
By the way, this performance at the A level came after he hit two hundreds in three games against New Zealand A in what was his debut series for India A! Talk about showing that you are ready for the next stage!
Now, he is on the precipice of a Test debut as Virat Kohli’s replacement in the squad. It’s because Rajat Patidar doesn’t just play spin.
He plays it well enough to bash it.
And after the performance against England in the first Test, where the Indian batters were found wanting in their stroke play against spin on a turning track, there can’t be a better option than Patidar to come in the top-order and score some tough but quick runs against spin.
Another factor makes him a great selection for India’s batting in the series — You see, for Patidar, his batting is not about runs; it’s about the feel. The runs are a natural by-product.
“Especially if you talk about batting, I don’t judge myself on performance,” he shared in an interview in 2022. “I need to get that batting ‘feel’ – the shots are good, the balance is there, the head is in the right position – till I don’t get that feel, I don’t feel I’m in good form. Obviously, it’s every batsman’s job to score runs, but if I feel good about my batting, the runs come automatically.”
This sounds like Bazball. But it isn’t. It’s just Rajat-ball.
With Cheteshwar Pujara out of the team, and Shubman Gill not inspiring confidence at number three, Patidar might be in the team for the long haul. There are a few crucial Test series this year, including a tour to Australia, where Patidar’s skills on the back foot and at one down will be in handsome demand.
The Indian team needs this late bloomer to do what only a veteran who has seen many domestic seasons can. If the signs are right, Vizag will see that veteran’s glorious display very soon.
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Rajat Patidar, the quintessential late bloomer, is now on the cusp of a Test debut. But a year prior, he was in a dicey position, both physically and mentally, after his Achilles injury surgery in the UK. In 2022, he went unsold in the IPL Auction, only to return and bombard his talent in the playoffs.
It took time. He didn’t follow the “early to bed, early to rise" diktat. He suffered, he persevered, and it’s all that matters because Rajat Patidar is not Rajat Patidar without the hurdles he overcame. And anyway, what would cricket be without all the Rajat Patidars and their stories? Now, just a short wait remains before a new chapter begins in that story.
