CHENNAI: If you are a youngster in Goa, chances are that your legs are busy knocking around a football.
Tweaking a leather sphere in one of those non-descript backyards of a stadium would be your last resort. And if by quirk you venture into the strange game of bat and ball, you might end up unnoticed, pondering over retirement as soon you make your debut.
Left-arm spinner Shadab Jakati’s destiny wouldn’t have been dissimilar but for the Indian Premier League. A bowler of modest talent with decent batting capabilities, he was not a head-turner in the grandiose affair that was the inaugural auction. Chennai picked him chiefly to make the numbers.
Predictably, with CSK performing commendably, he hardly figured in skipper MS Dhoni’s scheme of things. He spent the entire campaign in the dugout.
It seemed a similar fate awaited him this year too. But dibbly dobbler Joginder Sharma’s ineptness to rekindle last year’s form necessitated Dhoni to forge changes, and he drafted in Jakati against Delhi.
As it turned out, it was a masterstroke by Dhoni. And for Jakati, the agonising wait of 21 games reaped its recompense.
In his very first over, he creaked through Tillakaratne Dilshan’s defence. The in-form Sri Lankan was beaten in flight as the ball dismantled the furniture.
It was the sort of delivery that eased up his nerves, if he had anything at all.
While he extracts reasonable turn though not prodigious, he flights the ball nonchalantly.
He mixes his pace and guises his arm-ball that skids through. Also, Jakati delivers in crunch situations.
Against Deccan Charges, Jakati prised out Rohit Sharma and Dwayne Smith in a single over.
Suddenly, CSK’s bowling, which had seemed tardy until a few days ago, has a touch of menace to it.
