South African southpaw JP Duminy was a handy asset both with the bat and ball. Although he has not been able to put the Indian Premier League ablaze through his performances, he did have his moments from time to time, playing crucial knocks for different franchises across. Recalling his first stint in the IPL in 2009 with the Mumbai Indians, JP Duminy recalled an anecdote of how he met the Sri Lankan great Sanath Jayasuriya and Indian legends Zaheer Khan and Sachin Tendulkar as a 24-year-old for the first time in the team bus.
“I remember like, this was so nerve-racking. I walked in and there was Sachin Tendulkar, Zaheer Khan, Jayasuriya. I am a 24-year-old lighty and I was saying ‘hello, hello’. It was so intimidating. I said, ‘hi, hi, hi’ and went straight to the back of the bus. Now obviously, you have the high price tag as well expectation. We won the game and I didn’t particularly perform well. The season was okay. The team didn’t do particularly well, but I thought I did relatively okay. The highest run-scorer for our team,” Duminy said on ‘Biggest Man in Cricket’ podcast.
“If I think back to actually being in my first IPL, which was the 2009 version in South Africa, we had just finished a South African series against Australia. The IPL started the next day after the last ODI. So, the last ODI was in Johannesburg, the next day in Cape Town was the first match, our opening game. I flew that morning, landed, and went straight to the hotel where the Mumbai Indians were staying. I actually didn’t even make it to the team meeting. I walked straight onto the bus,” he added.
From 83 IPL games, Duminy has scored 2029 runs at an average of 39.78 and a strike rate of 124.02. With the ball, he managed to scalp 23 wickets at an economy of 7.38.
