OPINION
Follow UsAt the auction table in February, Mumbai did not break the bank for Tim David for no reason. The 8.25 crore they paid was a stupefyingly high fee for someone who’d never played top-tier international cricket and had just broken through at the franchise level, but the five-time champions knew exactly what they were paying for.
They were paying for knocks such as the one at the Brabourne on Friday.
Playing just his fourth game of the season, David walked in at a very awkward situation. Thanks to an electric start from the openers, Mumbai raced off to 97/1 after 10 overs but things went downhill from there. Suryakumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan perished in consecutive overs, post which the Gujarat bowlers completely flipped the script as they strangled the Mumbai batters. Between overs 10-15, Mumbai would end up scoring a mere 23 runs, and this was largely down to Kieron Pollard playing arguably his worst knock of the season.
MI were still in a position of command when Pollard walked in, with the score 111/3 in 12, but the 34-year-old, in a bizarre knock, played 9 dot balls in his first 13 balls before being cleaned up by Rashid Khan. It was bizarre because at no point did Pollard show any intent. Quite flabbergastingly, he attacked just 7.1% of the balls he faced; he was there trying to outrightly ‘block’ everything.
And so by the time Pollard left, Mumbai were in tatters. 97/1 in 10 overs had become 120/4 in 15, they’d lost all momentum and the Gujarat Titans bowlers had their tails up. What was once looking like a certain 200+ score now started to look more and more like 160.
How it eventually ended up being 177, then, was all down to one man. Tim David was playing just his fourth game of the season, but at the Brabourne, he showed exactly why Mumbai went the distance for him at the auction.
The innings from David on Friday was one that pretty much showcased what he’s all about: a cocktail of brute power and maniacal intent.
The brute power that David possesses gets spoken about a lot. Even in the immediate aftermath of his innings, the commentators, mid-game, asked him to take them through the four sixes he hit.
What’s not mentioned enough, however, is David’s intent. He is an outrageously quick starter. Between Jan 2021 and March 2022, among middle-order batters (#3 to #7), only Shahrukh Khan had a higher strike rate in the first 8 balls of an innings than David (148.2.)
And on Friday, as much as the Singaporean punished Gujarat with his six-hitting, it was the intent with which he began his innings that really helped Mumbai turn the tide around.
Gujarat had the upper hand when David walked in, with the preceding three overs yielding 9 runs and 2 wickets. But it took David all of seven balls to wrestle back the momentum. He took 14 off Shami’s third over — the first ‘full’ over he faced after taking a single against Rashid on his first ball — and it got Mumbai up and running.
Shami bowled far from a terrible over, but David pounced on anything that was remotely there to be dispatched. He struck back-to-back boundaries — the first creamed straight down the ground and the second pulled expertly — and was agonizingly close to registering three fours in four balls. A pair of 2s helped David take 14 from the over, and out of nowhere, Mumbai had life back in their innings.
David would end up scoring 29* off his next 14 to take his side over 175, and even though he conceded post the innings that he would have liked to have capitalized better, his onslaught proved to be enough. Mumbai ended up winning the encounter by five runs and David’s cameo did eventually prove to be the difference maker.
Friday was, in fact, the second consecutive instance of David helping his side clinch two points through exquisite counter-punching early in his innings. Last week at the DY Patil Stadium, Mumbai registered their first win of the season, and David had a significant hand to play in that too.
159 was what MI were chasing, but David walked in during a tricky period, with the side having lost two set batters (Suryakumar Yadav and Tilak Varma) in the span of three balls. You would back the chasing side to get 35 off 24 balls, but it is worth noting that Mumbai, at that point, had registered eight consecutive defeats. To add to that, RR also had an over of their trump card, Yuzvendra Chahal.
But playing his first game in 28 days, David sealed the encounter in the first 6 balls he faced. He smoked the second ball of his innings for a 97-meter six over long-on, and smashed Kuldeep Sen for back-to-back boundaries in the 18th over to race to 17 off 6 and kill the chase. Mumbai still had a nervy finish to the game, with Daniel Sams having to hit a final-over six to take the team over the line, but David’s aggression pretty much guaranteed them their first points of the season.
It makes one wonder, then, what could have been for Mumbai had they fielded David for the entire season. The right-hander began the season as a starter, but was axed after just two games, on the back of his failures against Delhi Capitals and Rajasthan Royals. His place in the XI was taken by young Dewald Brevis and the teenager immediately made himself indispensable, in turn shutting the possibility of a re-entry for David.
But, truth be told, the MI management created a headache for themselves the moment they drafted Brevis into the XI. In Suryakumar and Tilak Varma, the franchise already had their #3 and #4, but Brevis batting at three meant that they had to restructure the batting order. For a start, it left all the finishing duties predominantly with Pollard, and that proved to be catastrophic owing to the West Indian enduring one of his worst ever runs of form. But it also had an adverse effect on young Tilak Varma, who after starting the season with scores of 22 (15) and 61 (33) batting at No.4, struggled to find his tempo batting at No.5 as he struck at 121.4.
It is now hard to not look back on the games against Chennai, Lucknow and Punjab — all of which were winnable matches MI lost — and think that David’s presence might have made a significant difference.
Needless to say, though, it is no coincidence that Mumbai have won consecutive games after fielding what, at least on paper, is their best Top 6: Rohit, Kishan, Suryakumar, Tilak, Pollard and David.
Better late than never, they say, and thus, in a way, Mumbai would be delighted to have finally struck the right chords, even if the timing is less than ideal. Their playoff dreams might already be over, but they will certainly now be hungry to dash other franchises’ hopes. As Daniel Sams put it post the GT encounter, the five-time champs have a ‘mini-IPL’ of their own that they will be keen to sweep.
Kolkata Knight Riders, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Delhi Capitals — watch out.
