Prithvi Shaw played a knock of 113 runs off 121 balls against North-East Zone in the Duleep Trophy
Prithvi Shaw is working his way back after he had performed poorly at a fitness test ahead of the IPL and then suffered from a bout of typhoid during the tournament while he scored 113 off 121 balls for West Zone against North-East Zone in the season-opening Duleep Trophy at Chepauk.
Prithvi Shaw is working his way back after he had performed poorly at a fitness test ahead of the IPL and then suffered from a bout of typhoid during the tournament.
He scored 113 off 121 balls for West Zone against North-East Zone in the season-opening Duleep Trophy at Chepauk.
Shaw’s 206-run opening stand with Yashasvi Jaiswal laid the foundation for West Zone’s imposing first-innings total of 590 for 2 declared, which included double-hundreds from Jaiswal and Ajinkya Rahane.
“This [hundred] is special because it came after a long time,”
Shaw said.
“After training, and after giving myself time, [I am] coming back on track, which seems very good. I didn’t bat so much during the off-season. I was training with Vivek [Ramakrishna, Strength & Conditioning coach with Shaw’s IPL team Delhi Capitals]. I was training at the BKC [Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai]. First, we trained in Delhi and then came back and trained in Mumbai [during the off-season]. Just 12 days before the Duleep Trophy, I started batting just to get back on track with red-ball [cricket]. Otherwise, I was just working on my fitness.
“Back on track doesn’t mean I was going somewhere wrong. It’s like you are just lost somewhere and then you get to know yourself – you don’t belong there and you belong somewhere else. When you understand that, you feel back on track. And when you are scoring runs, it shows you have done something [right] – it might be training or on the field. It wasn’t just about training hard but yes, I lost a lot of weight. In the IPL, I had lost seven-eight kgs and I’m [back] there. So, it feels nice to be light.”
Shaw determined that “things could’ve been different” had he been fit during the IPL and fired for Capitals.
“In IPL, I got typhoid,”
Shaw said.
“That was the moment I could’ve played more games and scored runs for my team. Things could’ve been different. That is one thing that went wrong and obviously after that I was dropped. I trained again. See, in a cricketer’s life, the graph can’t always go up. It will go up and down; it’s just the timing and it’s the year that has been very difficult for me. But I’m a person who takes it as a challenge and [looks to] come out of it.”
“I feel every match for me from here is important,”
he said.
“I’m a guy who is a team man, but what I feel personal is every match is important for me – whatever opportunity comes towards me, I’ll try and grab it… I’ll just go there, train, work hard and score runs. Rest of it, I’ll let the selectors, and everyone else, make their decisions. I’ll just do my job.”
Shaw’s Duleep Trophy century accompanied a proviso – it was against a North-East side that was playing the competition for the first time. Be that as it may, he was satisfied with how he played out the new Kookaburra ball under cloudy Chennai skies on the first and second days.
“To be honest, if they [North-East Zone] are playing at this kind of a level, they’ve done something [right],”
Shaw said.
“Whichever players are there, a game is a game. You can’t judge a bowler or a batsman with [just] their potential. They do have potential because that’s why they’re playing here and they were bowling quite well, to be honest. In the first 20-25 overs, they bowled well. I think we were confident about our strokes against them, which helped.
“Yashasvi and Ajju [Rahane] Bhai getting those doubles; I could’ve played a little bit longer. It’s not about the bowling attack being weak or strong, but you just need one ball to get out if you’re not focused enough. We were quite focused, that’s why we got these runs.”