5 min readApr 27, 2026 09:45 AM IST
Rinku Singh waited. He waited till he struck his weightiest knock of the season; he waited till he took five catches of varying levels of strain; he waited till he thrashed the winning runs himself in the Super Over. And then he uncorked his emotions. He leapt and swiped the air, he kissed the Ekana turf, baring its grainy black soil. He gazed forlornly at the skies. If a drop of tear rolled down his cheek, it blended with the sweat dripping off his temple.
It has been a tough year for him. He lost his father during the T20 World Cup; he lost his spot in India’s playing eleven; his IPL form wobbled after the bright start, his club tottered at the bottom; he was quietly slipping out of public imagination; critics breathed down his neck. He needed a knock that could put a smile back on his face, and those of his supporters, one of relevance and substance, perhaps not so much to prove the world that he is not a one-knock wonder, as to convince himself of his resounding virtues. “Sometimes the mind just doesn’t work when you’re struggling,” he admitted after his half-century against Rajasthan Royals.
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It’s an indescribably wretched feeling. The batsman knows his failings; he knows the solutions; he is sweating in the nets and trying to be the batsman he once was. Yet, he keeps failing. The 53 against Royals reinstated hope and belief, but something was still pulling him back, something invisible clutching at his throat.
Sometimes the circumstances conspire; being part of a sinking ship doesn’t aid comebacks. But when you are neck deep in rough seas and the only urge is to survive, an unstoppable spirit pulls them over the currents. At 34 for four, when he walked out to bat, he finally knew that he had time to trench in, find rhythm, take the game deep and then summon the heavy artillery. His game has always been about incremental shifting of gears rather than a sudden spurt of explosion. Even in his most famous knock, when he struck five sixes on the spin to nail a thriller, he was eight off 12 balls, before blasting 33 off nine.
Rinku’s game has always been about incremental shifting of gears rather than a sudden spurt of explosion. (CREIMAS)
But he was misconstrued as an on-the-go basher and thrust into the burdensome finisher role. He struggled in his whole-hearted endeavour to transform. Here, the situation was different. He could take time. The ticking time bomb to hit a four or six straightaway didn’t hover over his head. After getting off the mark with a pulled four, a hit-me ball, he cussedly rotated strike, not even attempting a boundary for the next 13 balls. It’s a long boundary-less spell in this format. “My main aim is always to take the game till the end,” he explained his mindset to the broadcasters.
“Whenever I go in to bat and the team has already lost 3-4 wickets, my focus is on how to control and take the game forward. I think about how to rotate strike – get singles and doubles – and where I can find boundaries. Later I realised a spinner was bowling, so I adjusted accordingly,” he detailed. He ran 21 singles and a brace of doubles, with the alacrity and heaving legs of a late-running train.
6⃣, 6⃣, 6⃣, 6⃣ 🤯
🎥 Enjoy Rinku Singh’s sizzling ball-striking in the last over 🔥
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He is made more in the MS Dhoni than Tim David mould. It was only when he sized up Digvesh Rathi that he decided to turn on the devil mode. He slammed him for two fours, crunched flat shots. An onslaught did not follow. His team was six down, the surface was holding up at times, Mohammed Shami and Prince Yadav were probing away. “There wasn’t any fixed plan like saving shots for the last overs. I just reacted to the situation,” he said.
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His early boundaries off seamers were not thumping drives through cover or brutal sweeps. Most of them were glides and deflections, harnessing the bowlers’ pace. Most of the hits came behind the square on both sides. Even the six he struck off Shami was not a savage slash over point, but more of an extended chop. The treatment meted out to Rathi was different. He biffed him for four successive sixes — two over long-on, one beyond extra cover and another through the cow cordon.
The late flurry of sixes wouldn’t help with his image-burning exercise as a rampaging finisher rather than a more methodical top-order batsman capable of occasional madness. Those four hits would obscure in its thrills the flexibility of his approach and the deftness of his stroke-play. He is akin to the character actor remembered for that one action sequence. Perhaps, the perceptions and misconceptions would bother him less in a year of personal anguish.
