“I straightaway called Abhishek [Sharma] and asked, ‘what are you guys expecting, do I have to come and hit each and every ball?’ He was like, ‘on point, yeah, that is your job, you come here and you hit each and every ball, you just enjoy in this team.’ And that is the best part.
“Someone came in the middle with a water bottle and said we need to cross this total [their record of 287],” Kishan said. “I was like, I did not know if there was a target set or something, but yeah, when you don’t achieve the goal, it’s something like you want to do it again. We did not do it today, so it’s good to have that target goal for us coming back. Some days [when] we get a good start, batters are set, we will try and definitely get a record total.”
Kishan came into the IPL on the back of middling form in domestic cricket. His record in IPL 2024 wasn’t outstanding either – a solitary half-century in 14 innings for 320 runs. At Sunrisers, he was to play at No. 3, a slight deviation from his role as an opener at MI. Asked about the role change, Kishan said he got clarity from the captain and coach.
“They keep it very simple, to be very honest,” Kishan said “Like Pat [Cummins], he keeps it very simple, he knows if the player likes to attack from the beginning, he just backs it up. It’s not like if you go in there and get out trying to hit, it adds up any pressure. That’s the best part for any youngster.
“If you watched Aniket Verma playing his first game, at that moment he was not thinking about coming back not out. He just went for each and every ball, so that is the sort of confidence when you get from your support staff, or I would say captain, it makes a huge difference. And that is what something every player is looking up to, so I would say it helped us a lot.”
Kishan’s roaring start at SRH comes after a tricky year for him. Last year at this time, just prior to the IPL, he had been stripped of his BCCI central contract for seemingly not prioritising domestic cricket. Asked how that affected him, Kishan said: “Whatever the situation was, I think I was never a person who was thinking about those bad moments. I was very much in the present, like what’s needed. Yeah, I need to perform, I need to do good for me, whatever I’ll do, it will help me end of the day. So I just planned to get all the negative thoughts out and just think about what’s ahead, like IPL was coming up.
“So, yeah, I was just doing my hard work and, like I said to my loved ones, it was more about my family, the fans who were always there, the ones who are here supporting me today. Like I said, my brother was there. So it was just for them. Coming to SRH, playing in Hyderabad, the first game, setting up a good total for the team, so all together it was a very happy moment for me.”
Shashank Kishore is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo
