There was a small window of opportunity for Sunrisers Hyderabad on the @L0$. They had put 201 on the board, and when Jaydev Unadkat dismissed Phil Salt with the first ball of the second over, that window creaked open a little further. In walked Devdutt Padikkal as Impact Sub, replacing the very player (Jacob Duffy) who had already made a telling contribution to the game. Padikkal flicked the first ball he received - a friendly length delivery angling into his pads - over long leg for six.
Over the next 10 balls, he hit two more sixes and three fours, racing to 34 and grabbing the chase by the scruff of the neck before SRH could think of a squeeze. "He came in, hit the first ball for six, struck it over 200, took on all bowlers, allowed Virat to get into his innings even though he was striking quickly too. I thought the impetus that he showed when he came in was the real difference," SRH head coach Daniel Vettori admitted after the defeat.
Padikkal has always been a great timer of the ball but his shots on the night told their own story. He stepped out and carved a wide ball over deep point. He moved across his stumps and pulled a marginally short delivery past midwicket. He held his shape and clipped a slower ball over long-on. They were strokes of someone in the middle of a sustained and commanding run of form, one that had been building all domestic season.
In the Ranji Trophy, Padikkal hit 543 runs at 60.33, including a double-hundred in the semi-finals. In the Vijay Hazare Trophy, he made 725 runs at 90.62 with four hundreds in nine innings. In the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, he blazed 309 at 61.8 and a strike rate of 167.02.
RCB did challenge him to make that No.3 spot his own with the INR 7 crore acquisition of Venkatesh Iyer at the auction. But Padikkal would have the first shot for the place given the the signs of his T20 turnaround that had been visible since last year, when he made 247 runs in ten innings at a strike rate of 150.6 before a hamstring injury ended his season. It was a sharp and significant recovery from 2024, when he managed just 38 runs from seven games for Lucknow Super Giants at an average of 5.42 and a strike rate of 71.69. Those numbers belonged to a different player, at a very different point in his career.
By the time Padikkal was done tonight, he had made 61 off 26 balls in a 101-run stand with Virat Kohli. The chase had turned into a procession and he had left in awe even the master batter at the other end, who has watched his progression from close quarters since his debut with this franchise in 2020.
"I had plans of going aggressive in the powerplay," Kohli said after the game. "But when I saw him play, I was like, keep putting him back on strike and hit the odd boundary here and there. So, yeah, he completely took the game away from the opposition.
"His knock was tremendous. I've seen him at close quarters, and the skill he has, and now he's applying it, and this is at the back of a great domestic season with the red ball. His timing with the ball was phenomenal, his head positions, his balance, absolutely world class. I know what he can do with the bat if he's confident, and tonight was just a display of his sheer talent."
