3 min readChennaiUpdated: May 10, 2026 06:52 PM IST
When Urvil Patel walked into the middle in the fourth over, Lucknow Super Giants would have breathed easy. With 203 to defend, they had seen the back of Sanju Samson early. In a season when Chennai Super Kings have blown hot and cold, they are an outfit that has been over-reliant on Samson for the heavy lifting.
Here, in a must-win match, they needed a collective effort from the batting unit to chase what would be their first 200-plus chase since the 2018 final. The stakes were high and the Powerplay needed to be maximised.
The firepower that CSK needed was provided by Urvil, the wicketkeeper-batsman who had been waiting in the wings at the start of the season and hadn’t made full use of the opportunities he had been offered so far.
Off the first ball, he took a single. Off the next seven deliveries, he hit six sixes and one four. After clobbering pacer Avesh Khan for three successive maximums in the fifth over, in the next over bowled by leg-spinner Digvesh Rathi, he hit two consecutive sixes before hitting a boundary over cover and pulled his head back in disappointment. The next delivery disappeared into the stands. Urvil’s 50 came off 13 deliveries as Chennai were off to a flier in the chase.
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Those sixes had a pattern. Urvil’s range is limited. When he is in the middle, he seems reckless rather than full of conviction. But there is one shot in his playbook that he plays with total authority – take the front leg out of the way and smack the ball towards the mid-wicket region. It is where each of those six sixes disappeared. The bowling was listless. They kept feeding him in his swinging arc and he happily obliged. Chepauk was on its feet. The whistles were back.
Who is Urvil?
Hailing from Palanpur in Gujarat, a town known for its diamonds, Urvil owns the record for the fastest T20 century by an Indian, off 28 deliveries, in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. It is the second-fastest in the world too. He has a 41-ball century in the Vijay Hazare Trophy. So aggressive batting is all that Urvil knows.
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“My game is more suited for white-ball cricket,” he had told The Indian Express before. “Playing attacking cricket comes naturally to me. When you are opening, you have the licence to play freely. And as a batsman, you ought to put a lower price on your wicket and play high-risk cricket. It liberates my game as well. My intention has always been to go on the attack.”
Last season, despite his aggressive display, Urvil had not found any takers at the big player auction before CSK signed him up as a replacement player. Since then, he has hardly looked back.
“I really want to be part of India’s T20 side. Just looking at how they are playing, I feel it just suits my style. I’ve had the chance to speak to Hardik (Pandya) bhaiya… and he was also telling me how a batsman should approach a T20 game. That’s what I’m doing these days,” he adds.
