The path to revival, Prithvi Shaw decided on a bright Saturday morning, was through tough grind rather than the flash that had shone through his best of times and the worst of times. If late on Friday he wore the default cavalier robe, he sneaked into a roundhead’s costume the next day, batting judiciously to compose 75 off 102 balls, the lone speciality of the day that petered out to a tepid draw, with Maharashtra flying back with the points that owed to the first-innings lead against Kerala.
There could not be a better example of an innings of two halves. On Friday, he creamed 37 off 34 balls, aided by seven boundaries. He faced 66 balls on the last day, scored 38 runs, and none of them included a boundary. He devoured singles and twos, once a three, thus accumulating an innings. Perhaps, he heeded to the message of the first ball he faced on the day. It was widish from MD Nidheesh and he instinctively slashed airily to the point fielder, Baba Aparajith, who was perhaps getting his eyes used to the sunlight.
A message or a sign, Prithvi rethought his approach after the fortunate reprieve, as straightforward as any catch could be. He took a few steps away from the crease and practised a forward defence. The team was under no duress, Kerala’s fast bowlers were tired, even though the odd ball deviated off the seam. The spinners were insipid, the turn becoming slower and the invariable bounce not as pronounced as it was on the first two days.
But after the first-innings howler and the burden of the past, naysayers celebrating every failure of his, social media waiting to pounce, and for the first time in the stripes of a new team, this outing was immensely significant for him. The break with Maharashtra is perhaps his last lease of hope to revive his career from rolling into the unfulfilled talent bracket. To be uttered in the same breath as Vinod Kambli, another doomed batsman from Mumbai. Having endured a tough childhood, struggling to climb every rung of his career, and fallen from the next big talent so he could not hold his success territory, he knows the value, power and pressure of second chances. How rarely one gets those and how significant it is to make the best of it. Maharashtra would not be as patient as Mumbai in persisting with him. There would be negligible emotional hang-ups.
It’s the backdrop that makes his approach all the more fascinating. Thereafter, he eschewed the rush-of-blood strokes. He calmly left the wide ones, stifling the temptation to slash at those, his feet often crease-tied. He rarely swiped across, as he perished in the first innings. The fullish tempters on the off-and-middle stump were gently pushed down the ground. Kerala unleashed the spinners, in the hope that he would go after them and play a false shot. But he either jumped out to the pitch of the ball and smothered them, or just stretched his front-foot and blocked them.
Then, he was not merely blocking either, he was not run-stuck, but was steadily hoarding the runs. Plenty batsmen out of runs commit the folly of sequestering into a shell. But even when he embraced caution was looking to score the runs, albeit through less dynamic routes. He always had this side, but went unnoticed in the pile of boundaries. When he does all these, you wonder how he contrived to take the career to this stage.
He essayed some gorgeous strokes too, none more delightful than his trademark backfoot punch, when he rose with the ball, rode the bounce and glided it backward of point, his front foot in the air and the back-foot on tip toes. The stroke earned him only a solitary run. But here he was, the emphatic stroke-maker, the one who makes difficult strokes look easy.
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He is still not the Prithvi of old. But after a season of drift, he has begun to show old flashes of brilliance, the inherent qualities that no rust can corrode. The feet take time to move fluently, overburdening his hands to pull him out of trouble. On the field, he is still sluggish and ponderous, his fitness yet not at the level of a professional sportsman. But all those could be acquired if he has the toughness to stitch a solid season. After all, it was not too long that he has been amongst the runs. In the 2023-24 season, he scored 451 runs at 50.11 in nine innings. The season before he aggregated 70. Once upon a time he did have the hunger and dedication to succeed. He used to sit hours with Mumbai’s video analysts to find his flaws and dissect his dismissals.
It was not always about the runs, but his discipline, the virtue that makes greats out of talents. He showed plenty of that on Friday. Maybe, this is how he plots his return path, through the tough old art of grit and grind.
