NEWS
Follow UsAhead of the 2024 Indian Premier League (IPL) season, a major trade deal between Rajasthan Royals (RR) and Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) shook the league. RR let go of the southpaw Devdutt Padikkal in exchange for the speedster Avesh Khan, a trade deal that has benefitted them in heaps and bounds.
Since the trade, the Madhya Pradesh-born pacer has been integral to the Royals' success, with 16 wickets in the season. In case you were wondering, the 27-year-old only had picked up eight wickets in the 2023 season, struggling with momentum.
Finally, Avesh has opened up on the trade, which has benefitted him immensely. He was yet again vital for RR in their clash against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), where he picked up three wickets to stem the run flow towards the end.
"The trade was not in my control but I have benefited from it. I took it as a positive, I will get to bowl at a bigger ground, and a good team. As a bowler, you need that margin, and this year’s IPL has been completely different. I saw this as an opportunity, and do well. In the slog overs, I only bowl wide yorkers or slow bouncers, so I don’t really want to change anything,” Avesh said in the post-match press conference.
So, what held Avesh’s bowling back in the 2023 season?
“When I played for LSG last year, I played 10 Ranji Trophy matches before that where I bowled something like 320 overs. So the body was not able to respond so well. I was putting a lot of effort, but it wasn’t happening. One could say that there are four overs to be bowled in IPL and it’s just a 20-over game but it takes a lot of effort. And the body doesn’t respond when you are mentally and physically fatigued,” he said.
“I couldn’t understand this last year but when I analysed my IPL, I did a technical change in my action with my coach Anand Rajan and then played Deodhar Trophy, Duleep Trophy and made a comeback to the Indian team. It helped me understand how much effort to put in practice, when to take rest, when to recover the body. I understood my body better,” he added.
Unlike previous seasons of the IPL, Avesh’s game plan has been quite simple this year: playing cricket for enjoyment. The right-arm pacer has bowled tough overs at the death for the Royals, including defending multiple scores against batting behemoths like Nicholas Pooran, Tristan Stubbs, and Axar Patel, among others.
“I analysed that there is no point in taking so much tension. I played cricket for enjoyment. I never played for money. I consider myself lucky that whatever I wanted to do, it became my profession. There is nothing bigger than that. I always played tennis ball cricket, plastic ball cricket, gully cricket, box cricket, and played with same intensity,” Avesh said.
Avesh also discussed mental health, stating that one can work on mental toughness all the time, but when it comes to the field, one just has to focus on ‘execution’.
“I wake up at 2 o’clock on the day of the match so I don’t have to think much. Take my example. No matter how much mental toughness you do, you take classes or talk to anyone but until you come to that position, you will face that position again and again until you can come out of it,” he added.
“I have also done a lot of things to work on my mental toughness but when you need 10-12 runs in one over, you forget everything. You just focus on execution. So I made my cricket very simple. You have to sleep, eat and keep bowling,” explains Avesh.
Given Rajasthan's winless record in May, they went into the clash against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) as underdogs. However, Avesh opened up about the meetings, stating that the management's message was quite clear: to keep things simple.
“Either we will win or go home. We needed to give our all. We were in the top two till the last moment when we finished third. We didn’t want to regret our brand of cricket. That’s what Kumar Sangakkara said in the meeting. We wanted to keep things very simple; the meeting was just for two minutes. We didn’t go overboard,” Avesh said.
“We learnt from our mistakes the last time we played in Chennai. Sangakkara will come up with plans. We will work out on the small things, and bring it in our favour. One ball changes things. We will have the same focus in the upcoming game as well.”
RR next take on Sunrisers Hyderabad in Qualifier 2 on May 24 (Friday) at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai.
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