The evening before the IPL 2017 Eliminator against Sunrisers Hyderabad in Bengaluru, KKR’s performance analyst Anirudh Srikkanth walked up to Ishank Jaggi with news. Manish Pandey had a side strain. Jaggi might have to play. “The first thing that came out of my mouth was, ‘How?’” Jaggi says. He had not batted in 15 days. When the XI is set during a tournament, the reserves step back and give way. Jaggi had been doing exactly that – not in great touch, not in great rhythm. He asked for batting time. Simon Katich, the head coach, told him to go quickly. He got five to seven minutes before SRH arrived for their practice and the pitch had to be cleared. “That evening, probably I was damn nervous. Not because of the IPL Eliminator. But because of the thought that I was not prepared enough.” The next evening only became stranger. SRH battled to 128 before the rain arrived. Then came the waiting. Inside the Chinnaswamy dressing room, nobody was calm. A washout would have meant elimination – KKR had finished below SRH in the points table. “We were very desperate because if the match did not happen, we were out without actually giving it a fight.” Players waited for inspection updates as midnight approached. Shah Rukh Khan was near the dressing room area. “The look on his face was very anxious. Everybody was tense. Nobody was calm.” Eventually the Chinnaswamy’s drainage system saved the night. Long after a normal cricket match would have ended, the covers came off and the game restarted as a six-over chase. KKR needed 48. In a short chase, the mathematics are deceptive – there is no time to settle, no room to rebuild, and a batting order reshuffle can unravel a side before it has begun. What followed proved exactly that. The wickets started falling. Chris Lynn departed. Yusuf Pathan was run out. Robin Uthappa followed. The scoreboard read 12/3. Near the boundary rope, Jaggi heard Jacques Kallis calling him in. “I was like, I have made a comeback after four years of grind. One game. Back to this kind of situation. If at all it doesn’t go well, my IPL career is over. That was the only thought that came to my mind.” At the crease was Gautam Gambhir. “He was like, ‘It’s very easy. Not to worry. Just be calm. Ho jayega.’” Jaggi had one job. “My only priority was to give him the single. Not to try and become a hero because he was really hitting well.” Gambhir finished unbeaten on 32 off 19 balls. KKR entered Qualifier 2. Jaggi scored five not out off eight balls.Story continues below this ad At the hotel afterwards, there was cake-cutting. Gambhir made Jaggi do it. “He told me the way you handled the pressure was much more important rather than trying new things and throwing away your wicket.” Jaggi still sounds surprised by what those five runs meant. “I have played more than 20 years of professional cricket. But I never imagined that those five runs could give me so much respect and value in the side.” Also Read | KKR vs SRH, IPL 2017 Eliminator: Five talking points from the match Then Shah Rukh Khan walked into the dressing room. Not celebratory – relieved. “I think the most relieved man in that dressing room was Shah Rukh Khan. He hugged everybody. He was sitting on the floor and talking about how difficult those three hours of waiting had been.” Later, Nathan Coulter-Nile, the Player of the Match, questioned the wisdom of what had just happened. He had won the award and still wasn’t sure the game should have been played. “It sort of looked like I didn’t want to play,” he said. “It’s 2am, you can’t be playing cricket at 2 o’clock. Rules probably need to be looked at.” For Jaggi, the rules were beside the point. “That was my comeback game after four years. So probably that holds a different place in my heart for KKR and that team management.”
5* off 8 balls: The IPL innings nobody remembers and player who never forgot it
