CHENNAI: "The only thing you can control is your hard work and never give up attitude." Hours after the T20 World Cup snub, medium pacer Sandeep Sharma posted the message on Instagram on Wednesday.
It's not that Sandeep, who had played only two T20Is for India that too was back in 2015, was dead sure of his selection for the marquee event. Already 30 plus, he has reached that stage of his career where such call-ups usually dry down. Despite the crude fact, hope remains and the bowler from Patiala (Punjab) too was hopeful.
And why not? In his role as the death-overs specialist with the table toppers Rajasthan Royals, he had bowled one of the best spells of this season to date. He sent back Mumbai Indian batters one by one in Jaipur a few days ago bagging 5/18 from his four overs. He is also one of the three bowlers, who have claimed a five-wicket haul this season so far. The other two are Mumbai's Jasprit Bumrah and Yash Thakur of Lucknow Super Giants.
What's more important is the fact that Sandeep has achieved all this while bowling with quite a good economy rate of 6.83 (by Thursday's match). Only Bumrah (6.40) and Liam Livingstone of Punjab Kings (6.22) have a better economy rate than Sandeep among the bowlers who have played five or more matches till Thursday.
Given the responsibility assigned to him by the team last season, where he first went unsold before being picked up by the inaugural champions as a replacement player, Sandeep has been working mostly on slower bouncers and yorkers. Knuckle ball is another option, which he has been using efficiently. But it's not easy, especially for someone who loves to ball with the new ball in powerplays. "...the management had made it clear to me where I would be bowling majority of my overs so I worked mostly on slower bouncers and yorkers in the nets. I anyway knew I wouldn't be bowling much with the new ball because Boulty (Trent Boult) is a world-class bowler, one of the best in the world," the right-arm bowler had said after Rajasthan's last match against Lucknow.
The ongoing season, however, did not start the way Sandeep would have hoped. After the first two matches, a side strain kept him out of action for the next five matches. He returned with a bang with a Player of the Match winning performance against Mumbai. Against Lucknow, he remained economical thus making sure Rajasthan did not have to chase a target beyond 200. The good show continued on Thursday as Sandeep bowled miserly giving away 31 runs from his four overs and claimed the wicket of impact substitute and his Punjab teammate Amolpreet Singh.
With others around him going for eight runs or more per over, he stuck to his plan and dried up the flow of runs at least for the first three overs he bowled. Travis Head's 44-ball 58 and Nitish Kumar Reddy's 76 off 42 apart from some late firworks from Heinrich Klaasen (42 off 19) meant SRH put up 201 runs on the board. Rajasthan agonisingly fell short by 1 run losing only the second match this season.
A win would have been the cherry on the cake for Sandeep, who played his role to near perfection that too only a day after being ignored by the selectors, but it was not to be.