TIRUNELVELI: There’s a video on Ajay K Krishna’s Instagram wall from the 2021 IPL. The right-arm pacer is bowling to the Chennai Super Kings skipper MS Dhoni in the nets. While the former India captain handled Krishna comfortably, one could sense that the youngster had pace. There was no doubt about it.
As Krishna learned under some of the best in business — Lakshmipathy Balaji, and Dwayne Bravo to name a few — at CSK while serving as a net bowler in the last couple of season, he was also taking notes of the batters in the franchise if at he came up against them in the future. And that did not take long.
In the 2022 Tamil Nadu Premier League draft, Ruby Trichy Warriors bagged the pacer. Their skipper Rahil Shah spoke about him as one of the two players to watch out for at the toss of their opening game of the season against Dindigul Dragons at the ICL Ground, Tirunelveli on Friday.
With Trichy opting to bowl, Krishna was up against DD skipper Hari Nishaanth, a CSK player. It was his first over on debut but the 25-year-old was up against someone whom he had bowled a truckload of balls to in the CSK nets. However, he still had to execute it on the big stage, in front of a packed crowd and a televised audience.
Coming from over the wicket, the debutant pacer tried to angle the ball away from the left-hander, and often got it right. His first over in TNPL was a maiden. But Nishaanth, being a proven performer in the league, smashed veteran P Saravana Kumar for two fours and as many sixes, accumulating 23 runs from the next over.
Off the second ball of the next over, Krishna came around the wicket, pushing it wider. Nishaanth tried to get under it but ended up slicing it to the cover-point fielder. Krishna had won the battle and put the match back on track for Trichy.
With spinners tightening the screws, Krishna came back for a second spell and showed his tactical awareness. His full and straight delivery at pace after a slower yorker uprooted the stumps of Rajendran Vivek. He finished with 2/9 in four overs, helping Trichy restrict DD to 144/8. As Trichy chased down the target comfortably, thanks to Nidhish Rajagopal’s unbeaten 48-ball 64, Krishna joined the elite list of Thangarasu Natarajan, R Alexander and Varun Chakravarthy for the most economical spell in the history of TNPL.
“I was just trying to take the ball away from him (Nishaanth) for myself,” Krishna said during the mid-match interview. As far as his experience at CSK nets, Krishna said he learnt a lot from Dhoni as to where to bowl in different situations of the game. And he wasn’t far from the truth. His TNPL debut was a testament to it.
Brief scores: Dindigul Dragons 144/8 in 20 overs (Vignesh 32, Krishna 2/9) lost to Ruby Trichy Warriors 147/2 in 19 overs (Nidhish 64 n.o, Adithya 37 n.o).